Unwanted Items
Last weekend was the “100 Mile Yard Sale Tour” here in Northeastern Oklahoma. People throughout several towns for “a hundred miles” around sought to sell thousands of personally unwanted items they had amassed over the years, while bargain hunters by the hundreds went out in search of that certain something that they just couldn’t live without – at a “steal” of a price of course.
Unwanted, broken, without value?
My wife and I went out and made the shopping circuit on Friday, while sitting at home on Saturday and watching a fairly steady parade of bargain-seekers stopping by a neighbor’s yard to peruse their old and unwanted items. At one point, some folks in a fairly nice pickup truck with a boat and trailer in tow pulled up and parked near the neighbor’s driveway, so that they could get out and take a look at the items for sale there. And I got to thinking…
Just imagine with me for a moment, the following scenario…
A family gets up bright and early on Saturday morning to set up their once a year yard sale. In the process of putting their no longer wanted items out on display, they happen to drop one of the old, chipped, china cups that they were going to seek to sell for a meager ten cents apiece. It hits the concrete driveway and shatters into a dozen different pieces. The person who dropped it picks them all up and casually tosses them into the nearby garbage can. Later on that morning, a brand new, fully-loaded, highly-lifted, heavy duty, top of the line pickup truck worth around $80,000, towing a brand new speedboat worth in excess of $80,000, pulls up to the yard sale sight. The driver gets out, sees the busted cup in the garbage can, AND LEGITIMATELY offers to give those folks both the truck, boat, and trailer – straight up even no less – for just the broken cup!
Now, at first you would probably think this guy was crazy. After all, who would pay such an infinitely high price by comparison, for such a useless, ‘worthless,’ busted and broken vessel? The fact is, that almighty God not only would, but absolutely did – paying infinitely far more by comparison for each one of us broken, empty, and sin-stained human beings, than even the “extreme” illustration cited above would seem to indicate (1 Ptr. 1:17-21)!
And so, the only question that remains is: If a person/family can/will get up that early on a Saturday morning to set out a yard sale in hopes of making a few bucks that will most likely be gone by Monday, how can they or anyone else then, knowing the infinite price that God paid for them, not be grateful and thankful enough to get up on a Sunday morning and come to worship? To celebrate and appropriately say “Thank You” to this all-loving God for the inestimable price He paid for them, and His priceless present that will last, for all eternity (Romans 5+6)?