Anyone for Tea?

Revelation #1

I've just started reading Bonhoeffers 'The Cost of Discipleship' - I think it actually belongs to Wes, but he left it here when he moved out (that was almost a year and a half ago, so - I say - fair game!). But one - almost throwaway reference he makes early-on to the first half of 1 Corinthians 7:23 "You were bought at a price" is what really got me thinking...

Ask anyone to consider what is the most important thing to them in the world is, or - perhaps tougher - what they would find earthly life pointless without, and it will normally come back to a person, or relationship with a person - in many cases, a parents, spouse or child. Hopefully, very few would highlight their job, house, bank-balance or posessions, or claim that their very identity is wrapped up in the posession of those items. Certainly, I wouldn't presume to do so! (though, some of those things might be quite 'nice'!)

Having thought of that (and considering that I consequently do really need to go and visit my relatives soon!!), I start to consider what - if you asked God the same question - that He would answer?

My initial feeling is that it would - ultimately - be no created thing. You, me, and the tea plantations of Sri Lanka, we are indeed all precious in his sight - yes. But - if we had never existed - God would still be God, and would not be any less because of our absence.

"Surely the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales; he weighs the islands as though they were fine dust." Isaiah 40:15

So, nonetheless - looking around us and trying to estimate the worth of all that is in creation, including man himself - we must contrast that with the one thing that is outside of the created order. The one thing - therefore - that God really 'needs'. This thing is Himself - complete, supreme and triune. It should then be blindingly obvious here that "creation vs. God", is like comparing peanuts with galaxies, atoms with worlds, it's not even slightly a fair fight!

Then - given that - consider that when God chose to sacrifice himself - in the form of Jesus - for restitution for our sins, what he was placing upon the altar was not only the form of the sinless man - part of the created order - but his own very 'Godness' in the form of his only son.

For me that suddenly dawned afresh into a picture of - firstly - just how insuppasingly much that sacrifice was worth, and the - flip side - a realisation of how much my debt of gratitude should be.

"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
Phillipians 2

Some of you might - at this point - say 'well, duuuh!'. But it floated my boat ;-)

So who can tell of the glory of God?,
Who can tell of the power of his hand?
He is above all my words and my breath
But yet - for me - he dies.

posted by RichB @ Tuesday, January 24, 2006