I think we could all agree that by and large we value things more if we have to work for them. Think about precious metals and gemstones. Diamonds are pretty rare, and mining for them is difficult and expensive. Even artificial diamonds aren’t cheap.
If someone gave you ten million dollars you’d be ecstatic for a while, but then you’d take it for granted. You’d still be glad you have it, but the “Ed McMahon” moment would fade, and jumping up and down and throwing a party every night would become dull.
Sure, there are people who’d throw party after party, but that would be about the celebration itself, not the ten million dollars. Eventually the money would run out, and lottery winners have shown people blowing through big winnings and being worse off than before the cash payout.
“But Mark, what does that have to do with God?”
One of the issues expressed by skeptics is, “If there’s a God, He sure doesn’t give much evidence for His existence.” Could it be God wants us to look? Maybe He wants us to dig into the earth for the gemstones of the Supreme Deity.
The Bible gives us what we need intellectually to believe Jesus is God. In fact, there’s more than enough evidence there to convince anyone. The thing is, people don’t look at it because they disbelieve before they even look. If you don’t look, you won’t find.
Once I started taking my walk more seriously I was amazed at what I hadn’t known. Sure, I “believed,” but the implications were lost on me. I was, “Yup, there’s a God. When does the pizza get here?”
Remember that old Wendy’s commercial where Clara Pellar asked, “Where’s the beef?” In my life there was a lot of bun, but nobody was “back there,” as Clara put it.
Sidebar: I heard Clara was almost totally deaf, and someone was hiding under the table and tapping her foot to cue her as to when she should deliver her line.
Most people are more interested in the big bun of life. That there’s no beef in their existence doesn’t even enter their calculation. They get a house, food on their table, and they’re okay with that. Sure, they’d rather have the bun made with organic wheat using eggs laid by free range chickens, but it’s still a bun.
Is there beef in your life? Do you settle for quartz crystal or do you work hard for the diamond ring? Ask anyone with a car if they’d rather drive a Yugo or a Jaguar. They’d rather have the beef, and not just local hamburger. “Gimme the Wagyu beef!”
My opinion is that’s why God doesn’t appear to everyone like He did to Abraham. People value what they work for, and if you got God handed to you on a silver platter He wouldn’t be valued - in fact He’d be cheapened.
To really value what He did for us you need to mine the diamonds. You need to sell everything and buy that pearl because it’s so precious to you. Living without it is inconceivable, and everything else you own looks like a thirty-year-old Yugo rusting away in the woods.
Once people discover who Jesus really is they can’t get enough of Him. They want to spend their lives staring at the brushstrokes of a master painter, seeing different nuances each and every day.
God doesn’t want you to hang him on the wall to show off to guests. He wants you to tease out a new discovery every time you look at Him.
Dig for the diamond. Discover God. He’s better than Van Gogh, Wagyu beef, Jaguars, and Ed McMahon’s check combined.
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