December 16, 2020
Redemption’s Story
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
That’s it, we can call a close to devotions for the day and just spend the rest of the day meditating on that verse. But wait, as they say on TV, there’s more. One of my favorite stories is not a Christmas story but, I sometimes think about it at this time of the year. I suspect that many of you are familiar with it but, it never fails to touch my heart.
The story goes that there was a young boy who loved water and boats. No surprise there, most of us either have had young children that are completely captivated by any water opportunity, or in my case; have been that child. The young boy in this story decided to build a model boat; he took great care to make it perfect or as close to perfect as he could. When finished painting and detailing it he was extremely pleased with his efforts and immediately took the boat down to the stream to play. He would carefully place it in the water and allow the current or breeze to take the boat downstream, as he ran ahead to where he could catch it, and then go back upstream where he would repeat the fun.
This worked well for a number of outings until one day when either the current or the wind was a bit too strong and the model boat got away from the boy and disappeared downstream. He was heart broken and went home believing in his young mind that all was lost. Since he didn’t have a boat any longer and couldn’t find in his heart motivation to build another, the boy would wander about the sidewalks looking in shop windows in the town he lived in and dream of happier days. But losing the boat he had put so much time and love into was what dominated his thoughts.
During one of these rather sad trips, he happened to walk by the pawn shop in town and to his surprise, in the front window was a boat that looked just like the one he had built. When he ran up to the window and looked closely, it wasn’t like his boat, “It was his boat!”
The young boy immediately went in the shop and asked the owner if he could have his boat back and the shop keeper said that he could have the boat if he paid for it because the boat was the property of the shop not the boy. The boy attempted to convince the shopkeeper that he had built it with his own hands and lost it while playing with it to no avail. The only way for the boy to get back his boat was to buy it, and to add insult to injury the price on the boat was more than the boy had in his savings.
He left sad but, determined that he would find a way to get his boat back. He went home and counted his savings and then made arrangements with people that needed help with small jobs that a young boy could handle to work and save until he had enough money to go back to the shop and pay for his boat. In the dictionary, what the young boy did is one of the definitions of the word redeem, “To regain possession of something in exchange for payment.”
Friend, you and I are much more valuable to God than that toy boat to the young boy in the story but, each one of us in our natural state are just as separated from our Creator. There is a stream called sin trying daily to take us to a place where there is no value placed on our life but, a price tag placed out of our reach to pay. Thankfully we have God’s promises that there was and is no price too high and the redemption story winds its’ way through the pages of His Word.
Lam 3:57-58 You came near on the day I called to You; You said, “Do not fear!” Lord, You have pleaded my soul’s cause; You have redeemed my life.
Isaiah 44:22 I have blotted out your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like mist; return to me, for I have redeemed you.
1 Peter 1:18-19 knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.
Eph 1:7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace
Share the redemption story this Christmas with those you meet, they may still be “Living in a futile or empty way of life,” as it says in 1 Peter. The price to redeem us was high, the value placed on us by the Creator was even higher, and the payment by the Son was beyond comprehension.
By God’s grace,
Ron Mathre