Scrap

Last week my most valuable material possession - a somewhat ageing Ford Focus - made some strange noises that it had never made before.

 

I'm no mechanic but experience (my own and others) informs me that sudden noises from underneath the bonnet (American: hood) are rarely good news.

 

It remained by the house until I could drive it gingerly down the hill to the garage.  In the event this was the last time I drove it though I did not know this at the time.  I knew this only when, later in the day, the service receptionist rang.  Sorting out the noise wasn't going to be cheap but that was not even half of it.  The car was not roadworthy for an entirely different reason that would also cost hundreds of pounds and within six months another urgent expensive repair would be required on a third thing that threatened to make it unroadworthy as well.

 

The calculation was not difficult.  This may have been my most valuable earthly possession but the repair bill was going to be its equal!  It was not worth repairing, it was off to the scrapheap.

 

I observe that the price God paid for the salvation of his people was a crazily high repair cost.  We must be very, very valuable to him.

Gift

Years ago I stood on the streets of an American city giving out leaflets for a Josh McDowell event.

I was not happy. My borrowed car had needed to be returned and I had been given something of a wreck in its place, complete with straw in the back. Diane had been to the dentist and had a sore mouth. I had Hay Fever big-time. The sun was beating down in a way that the British always think we'd like it to until it does and then we don't like it to.

Just standing there was an effort; standing there looking even faintly interested in what I was doing was a BIG effort. The old Christians used to call it 'adorning the gospel', and in those terms I was in a very unpolished state.

Then the girl came by. She looked the part, an elegant friendly-looking young woman. It made the smile easier than usual but still hard to come by.

Then the refusal. This is what she said,

"I don't take anything given away".

Given away!!!??? Hey, girl, I'm suffering here to give this to you (I felt like saying).

This Sunday I'm beginning a series in the Book of Romans in the Bible. It tells us explicitly that God's salvation is given away. Some people, like that girl, don't like that. Yet although it looks free when the preacher, the writer, the evangelist, the teacher, offers the Good News to us we do well to remember that the free offer comes at quite a price; not heat and hay fever but the life and death of Jesus the Messiah.