Good Thursday morning! I have a piece of what we call paper in my wallet. This piece of green stuff is more of a cloth or rag than a paper, but we call it paper money. Just how useful is this bit of rag? There are many better fire starters for it does not burn as well as true paper. You could use it as insulation for a house, but there are less expensive materials with better insulating properties. This rag does not absorb moisture very well; cotton towels are far superior. Cleaning up the kitchen counter is better served with a sponge. I can write on this bit of rag or paper, but a blank notepad works much better. A stack of these things might work to prop up a short table leg, but then again a bit of wood sawed or sanded is more useful. The point is: if you cannot purchase an item or fulfill an obligation with this stuff, it is pretty much useless. Our coins are much the same, though their metal content might actually prove more useful in certain situations. So many worship money, but you cannot eat a pile of it and expect good nutrition. The coins are rather hard on the teeth too. The mint makes the stuff pretty, but many things are pretty to look at. Yet, I'm thinking that if one of us saw a slip of paper about the right size and color in a ditch, not one of us would simply pass by. Even a shamelessly rich person will stoop down to pick up a Franklin or a Grant on the street, probably even a George or an Abe. And you know what I'm talking about even with the slang names!
Money gains its worth by what we can do with it, not from what it is. As long as our society accepts the green bills and clinking coins as payment, money has worth. What then is our worth to God? Nothing we can do on this earth is something that God cannot do better or faster. We are like the paper bill, but without the ability to purchase something useful with it. But, we are worse than that. Imagine a bill fluttering down from the sky to land in a mud puddle. You'll go in and get it, right? Then the wind picks up and blows the bill into a sewage treatment pond. Now you might ask what the denomination is on the bill. A hundred or a even a twenty and you are all for going in after it, but a one or a five might not be worth it. Well, we are the one dollar bill that landed in the radioactive, waste chemical, sewer-sludge pond with the skull and crossbones sign over it. Our sin has made us so dirty that God must wash us in something powerful to even look at us. You might say that we would have no value to God whatsoever without a fundamental change in our nature. Hmm, that kind of sums it up right there.
We gain our value to God through the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus, for his part, loved us enough in our contaminated state to go to the cross and sacrifice His life that we might be saved. Like the bill in the pond, we have no ability to cleanse ourselves, but we can be washed. Just any old detergent is not going to do the job. However, what if God himself made a sacrifice so potent that we are made as though sin had never contaminated us? In our metaphor, the bill that fell in that worst pond would be made as though fresh from the mint. You would be glad to accept that bill so new and shiny does it look now. In just that way, God will be glad to accept us into His eternal home when Jesus makes us new. God does all the work to cleanse us through His Son... because He wants you and me to be with Him forever!
Praise God for saving grace!Bucky
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