Almost 150 years ago, a young couple loaded a covered wagon with their few belongings and two small daughters and traveled from their home in Wisconsin to a promised land in Kansas. Coming to a stretch of rolling prairie near a creek, the father’s practiced eye sized it up and declared to his wife, “Well Caroline, here’s the place we’ve been looking for. Might as well camp.” As the little girls bedded down in the wagon that night, they felt the stillness of “stars shining down on a great, flat land where no one lived.”

You matter. You matter to those who love you, those who depend on you, those who work with you. Simply by being born you clear a space for yourself in the world that can’t be filled by anyone else. What’s more, you occupy a space in the mind of God—the ultimate definition of “mattering.”

That seems self-evident, but sometimes it takes faith to believe it, and when faith falters and hope fails, mattering itself becomes a burden—even an intolerable burden.

Once upon a sunlit spot of ground, God bent down and shaped a mound of dust. The elemental particles that made up the ground were already in place, and so were the elements of a home: blue sky holding in a band of oxygen, springs of water welling up below, a sun making its stately march across the sphere. “Dust” seems an odd medium for shaping, as it doesn’t stick together. But by divine will it did; its Maker considered it beautiful, like everything else. It was a new shape, never seen before—like everything else.

Here’s one thing I know: Donald Trump’s presidency is one wild roller-coaster ride flashing with neon. By contrast, a Hillary Clinton presidency would have been stop-and-go traffic in a dingy shade of gray.

That’s the limit of my prescience, though. Three years ago I mocked the possibility of a Trump campaign in a column titled “Year-round silly season.” Not many expected he would run, few expected he’d be nominated, and almost no one expected him to win. Silly us!

Two months ago our electric co-op magazine reported on the efforts of volunteer linemen from Missouri to bring electric power to a remote village in the Bolivian Andes. It was no small effort. At 13,000 feet, with no auxiliary power, the volunteers set poles and strung lines while willing villagers dug placement holes by hand and helped lift heavy cables. All received their reward when a single bulb washed the village leader’s home with light. For the people of Chapasirca, life is brighter now.

West Side Story, which debuted in 1958, remains a staple of high-school musical productions. The catchy songs and energetic dances disguise how dated is this “updated” version of Romeo and Juliet. But one scene will always be relevant. It comes in the second act, after hostility between Sharks and Jets has claimed two lives and threatens at least two more. “You kids!” exclaims Doc, the owner of the drug store where the Jets hang out. “You make the whole world lousy!” Action, the default leader of the gang, snaps back, “That’s the way we found it, Doc!”

In July 1995, Jeff Bezos sold his first book on an internet site called Amazon.com. True to tech-wizard legend, he shipped the volume from his garage in Seattle. Anyone with an ounce of computer savvy could have done the same, and before long many did; what set Bezos apart was his vision for online marketing.