What’s It Worth?

02/12/11 | Posted by HughB

I’ve recently come across this stuff - a plastic which softens in hot water and then can be moulded. It’s been selling at a reasonable price for some time. Then this year another company renamed it, repackaged it and is selling it at more than double the price. And though the cheaper brand is still available, people are buying the expensive stuff. What’s going on?

 Plastic

The difference lies in the uses that the different companies have identified. Initially it was seen as a good material to replace or repair broken parts – a one-time, one-off “bodge-job”. But this new company has promoted the material as reusable and ever-lasting and with a new purpose - casting. And so a new group of people are using it and, in ignorance, are willing to pay more.

Christmas is a time when we remember that God didn’t just see our purpose in terms of our three score years and ten on earth. The most famous verse in the Bible tells us that

“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” (John 3:16).

Whether he encountered a Roman officer, a religious leader, a distraught parent, a leper or a woman caught in adultery, Jesus saw everyone in terms of their eternity with or without him and treated them with compassion and dignity.

Today we still seem to value people by what they do and whether we think their work is important. Just think of the amount of times during the recent dispute in the UK that you have heard that the public sector does not create wealth while the private sector does.

The apostle Paul recognised that part of the human problem is that

“we don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist”

but he knew that there would be a day when

“we’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us.”

(1 Corinthians 13:12 – The Message).

This Christmas can we look through the fog and see one another and ourselves as God sees us?

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