A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
– George Bernard Shaw

1 Peter 1:18b-19
You were bought, not with something that ruins like gold or silver, but with the precious blood of Christ, who was like a pure and perfect lamb.

All the gold commercials on TV crack me up, especially the one that’s been around forever with the woman basically drooling as she touches all the gold around her and slowly says “Geyold” as if saying it more pronounced would make it even shinier. The new batch of gold commercials follow a different theme, though. The lavish lady was meant to appeal to the ultra-wealthy, but the ones that run now are meant to appeal to anyone who is freaked out about the current economy.

“Buy gold because it will keep you financially secure even when the world’s entire financial structures coming crashing around you and people decide that gold isn’t worth any more than dirt! Hurry! Don’t wait! Gold is your lifeline!”

Don’t think for a second that I’m writing this from a financial perspective, so if you’ve got gold or are considering purchasing some, that’s a conversation you may want to have with a financial guy. I’m not him. My point is that it struck me funny that Peter told the people he was writing to that their faith wasn’t bought with what we’d consider an expensive commodity. Basically, he told them that they weren’t bought with junk that would break and rot and fade away, because their salvation mattered a whole lot more than that. They were going through a lot of crap at the time, and my guess is that they felt like crap. But Peter was showing them a powerful truth: the value of something is not determined by the thing itself, but rather by how much another values it.

Your value does not come from what you have or haven’t done. That’s how we value ourselves and others. Been a good citizen? Your value goes up. Been a real jerk? Value goes down. But in those scenarios, we’re the ones valuing ourselves, and so it’s still about us. But in God’s economy, He sees us as valuable because He knows the price that was paid for us, and that alone changes everything we think we know about a value system.

Consider picking up a pen and holding it, writing with it, seeing how familiar it looks to a Bic pen. You might even start to chew on the top as if you were back in grammar school. You aren’t wrong, of course, to do any of those things, especially since we both know what a Bic pen costs. But how would things change if you found out who the owner of that pen was and how much he had paid for it? If you were told that Donald Trump, bad hair and all, had bought it for 1 million dollars?

For our purposes here, can we simplify that answer to one thing? You would pause. You would think and wonder. You would ask anyone who might know about the history of that pen, because you would know that there has to be more to the story. Heck, even if you stole it to put it on eBay, you’d market it with “Donald Trump’s $1 Million Pen.”

We treat each other like dollar bin Bic pens, because, well, that’s pretty much what we were. Until a King bought us with the most valuable commodity ever – the blood of His Son – and changed everything. Or, at least, it should.

You’ll be around people today who look like ordinary Bic pens. But look closer and see if perhaps they have been made more valuable by the Owner who bought them. Pause. Think and wonder. Ask them about their history, because everyone has a story.

And give thanks for a King who sees more in us than we ever thought possible.