This
morning I felt really pleased with myself because I had managed to
change an electric socket (I’m no handyman). Perhaps I felt even
better when I switched on the radio in time to listen to Any
Questions.
Imagine
my amazement when Leanne Wood, the leader of the Welsh political
party Plaid Cymru, talked about a school in Wales that had been built
using a Private Funding Initiative (PFI). These are hugely
controversial because the contractors who help fund the projects
often demand to have a monopoly on maintaining the buildings. This
means that they can virtually charge what they like for repairs. In
the case of this school they asked for £2500 – to change an
electric socket!
I
mused about my morning’s activity. It was a job I had put off for
months, anxious as I was about the hazards of working with anything
electrical and unsure that I could carry it out with any competence.
There were many false starts and anxious moments before I completed
the wiring, put the socket together again, reconnected the power and
tried an appliance on it to see whether it worked. It did. But never
in my wildest dreams did I imagine, when I paid £1.29 for a new
socket and gave my labour free of charge, that my anxious toil would
be worth a four-figure sum of money in the setting of that school.
Perhaps I should retrain as an electrician …
There
are many circumstances where one person sees more value in a thing
than another might do. Estate agents will tend to advise you that a
property is worth no more and no less than what someone else is
prepared to pay for it – there is no authorised scale of values for
such things. And … what about the human soul?
O
teach me what it meaneth,
that
cross uplifted high,
with
One, the Man of Sorrows,
condemned
to bleed and die!
O
teach me what it cost Thee
to
make a sinner whole;
and
teach me, Saviour, teach me
the
value of a soul!
Lucy
Ann Bennett, 1850-1927
Yet,
for the man or woman in the street in the secular and materialistic
Britain of today, the going rate for the human soul is low and the
call for a saviour of souls non-existent. Yet Jesus thought it worth
His while to give up His life for sinful souls. Not only that, He
also gave up 30 years of the enjoyment of His eternal glory with God
His Father, which is a massive enough sacrifice in itself.
Are
not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to
the ground apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head
are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than
many sparrows. Matthew 10:29-31 ESV
Have
this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who,
though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a
thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a
servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human
form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross. Philippians 2:5-8
Many
people are literally dying today for lack of self-worth. Do you
recognise how valuable you are to the Saviour? Will you respond to
His valuation of you?
