Some will surreptitiously try to hide their first plate of rice in a plastic bag and go for seconds. Others have no qualms putting out their hands for an extra goody-bag. Because of the greed of some, others are deprived. So it was the Saturday before Christmas; it had started out so well, with Christmas carols belted out by a group of volunteers. Then a brief sharing of the real meaning of Christmas, not being about Santa Claus giving out presents but about Jesus Christ who was, and is and ever will be the best present from God. Then as the crowd swelled with people coming in after the sharing, the free food and towels ran out. And that's when the real human nature reared its ugly head. There were complaints of this, that and the other. Forgotten was the good news of Jesus coming to save the world.
How easily and quickly man gets distracted and forget the real point. Like someone said we tend to major on the minors of life. We can get so caught up over all the freebies trotted out by man, we ignore altogether the greatest free gift from God. It's like little kids going all agog over the presents at the bottom of the Christmas tree, totally unaware and oblivious that the best gift from mummy/daddy is actually their hearts' love, unseen and priceless. I dare say every human parent wants the best for their off-spring and have no greater desire than that their kids simply love them back . At least that's my understanding of parenthood. Translate that into a higher level, and surely its not hard to understand God's intent is to give us the best-est in His infinite wisdom, and His desire is simply to have us love Him back because He first loved us. The problem is like all growing and grown-up kids who never think that what our parents want for us is good, we are quite liable to disagree with God on this issue too. So whilst His idea is to mature us spiritually to experience the abundant eternal life that is beyond anything we can ever imagine, many just play hide-n-seek or runaway, and much prefer building our own castles in the sand of mortal life.
Oh, some of us will condescend to pay God some form of lip-service. So we will have lots of people believing all gods are the same, all roads lead to heaven anyway, whatever you feel is good for you will do, god is ok with that. That's also how we can have churches packed to the brim, even overflowing, on 3 days in a year ie for Good Friday, Easter and Christmas, but half full (or half empty, depending on whether you are an optimist or a pessimist) on the rest of the 'normal' Sundays, and I dare say, even less at prayer meetings. Worse, some Christians are seen in God's House only 3 times in their lives - on their baptism, wedding and funeral day. If that's meant to be a joke, I am sure God isn't laughing. Imagine the feelings of a parent being treated that way by his/her kids (which apparently is not that uncommon a practice in today's society).
Not to mention we could be regularly attending church for all sorts of reasons - 'cool' music, inspiring preaching, relevant insights, wonderful fellowship, great 'feel-good' vibes, magnificent building (which we sacrificially paid for and so consider ourselves 'entitled' to book our fave seat there) - and fool ourselves in thinking we surely must be doing ok with God. Really, truly? Hmmm, if my kids only came back home for the great food I cook (actually quite the opposite), the comfy bed or house, free laundry-service, or to enjoy the companionship of siblings (which is sometimes more like mutual toleration in fact), I would be a very sad mum indeed, even if they could and do dutifully 'pay' me out of their earnings. Lest I be accused of being judgmental, I am just stating obvious and observable facts. After all, everyone, Christians and non-Christians can talk a lot and do a lot of 'good' and 'right' things, and still get it all wrong with God.
Perhaps we take Jesus so lightly because we hear the good news touted so often that salvation is a free gift. A gift can be treasured or can be chucked aside anytime, since it costs us nothing. I have received many gifts in my life, and whilst I am appropriately grateful, I have to admit some gifts I have donated away because honestly I don't need/find any use for them. Likewise, some people find they have no use or need for God...so thanks but no thanks, God, You go your way, I go mine; we owe each other nothing. Others treat God like a gift we can tuck away in 1 corner of our heart's store and pull it out on the days we feel like it. Or maybe we regularly polish it up and place it in the most prominent corner of our living-room to 'show off' to visitors to check out, and when the visitors go off, we pack it back into the box. But we have never taken it up into the privacy of our own bed-room to admire and fuss over it ourselves (where got time for that); besides bed-rooms are off-limits to everyone (even or especially God). Neither would we go to the extent of carrying it around everywhere with us (that's way too much bother). Amazing the ways we can treat a gift or God.
The goody-bags we give out free to the 'street-ites' during festivals cost something to those who bought and packed them. Every gift comes with a price tag actually, even if it's given free to the recipient. A story goes that when Jesus asked the devil who was waiting to drag a dying man to hell, "How much for the soul of this human?" and the devil answered, "A life for a life, Your life for this human's ", Jesus replied, "Done", and died on the cross. A business news article tried to calculate the worth of a 'soul', using a diverse variety of 'measurements', from such things as the price of gold, employment income, value of statistical life, world GDP down to the comic Homer Simpson's exchange of his soul for a donut, "ignoring the extreme cases of $1.00 and $16.6 trillion, we have four examples where the soul was evaluated at $540,600, $1,745,926, $241,789 and $8,600,000 in 2013 dollars.... the average here is $2.8 million for a soul". (Currency is US$) Man, we are that cheap? But hang on, if we ask our Creator, how much are we worth to You, God? Jesus answered, "What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?" (Mark 8:36)
So how much is the 'whole world' worth? Well, I don't know if we can even estimate the cost of all the physical stuff alone that makes up the world's 'worth' - mountains, forests, sunrise, sunsets, flowers, wind, clouds, rain, everything in the heavens, on earth and under the seas...it's really a moot point - our souls are simply priceless to God. Yet too often we are inclined to reduce the significance that it cost God a most precious Life to give us life. Not just any life, but the life of the pure, sinless and divine One from heaven. The cost Jesus paid to bear every human sin, to die on the cross and to go to hell on our behalf is uncountable and invaluable - that's how much we mean to God.
So next time someone says, Salvation is free, it would be good to remember and appreciate the truth - Salvation is free for all only because SomeOne paid the price. The cost of this 'freebie' was the blood of Jesus Christ. And lest we are minded to throw the gift away because we never asked for it, may we also realize the reason why He did it for ungrateful, forgetful man, is because "This is love; not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent Jesus as an atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:10). All other loves derive from this perfect and perfected Love. If we have not this Love, all other loves can never satisfy because they would be incomplete.
"This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment" - 1 John 4:17
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