To steal an illustration that my Pastor used this past Sunday, imagine someone wants to hand you a ten-dollar bill, no strings attached. Want it? Of course you do. Why not take it? It’s free money.
OK, but what if the bill was crumpled up? Still want it? Sure, it’s still worth the same. Stomp on it—still worth ten dollars. Doesn’t matter what happens to the paper: wet, stained, dirty, worn, smelly, it’s still ten dollars, it still has value, we can still use it.
We’re the same way: God still uses us, we still have value, no matter what happens to us. Regardless of our past, our experiences, our hurts, our pain, our successes or failures, whether we spent that time following God or turning away from Him, if we put that life in God’s hands, he can take it and use it.
But the metaphor doesn’t go far enough. Eventually, we can destroy a ten-dollar bill. At some point, there are things we can do to it that strip the value right out of it. Bleach out the ink, shred the paper, burn it, and scatter the ashes, and no amount of effort on our part will be able to cash it in. God, on the other hand, can take our washed out, shredded, burnt and scattered lives and somehow manage to end up with even more value after he has redeemed us. God has a way of taking the mistakes, the wrong turns, the dead ends, and the foolishness and using them to make us and the people around us better.
We just have to let him take over the mess and do what he needs to do with it. We have to back out and let go of the control. That takes faith, it takes trust, and it takes a pretty serious relationship with him.
I know I’ve written on this before, and I’m sure I’ll write about it again (heck, it’s the theme of the study my small group is doing now), but if I had to boil down everything I’ve learned in nearly forty years on this planet to one sentence, it’s this: it’s all about the relationships. Our relationship with God and our relationship with the other people around us. Everything else hinges on that. Everything.
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