Deal or No Deal

Everybody loves a good deal. I have a friend named Kandi who can always, and I mean always, find a good deal. She loves garage sales and Wal-Mart. She loves getting something for barely anything. And she usually makes really good money on her own yard sales. She knows what things are worth.
Yesterday morning, in Bible class, we had a discussion about the value of a soul. Looking back, I can't remember what started this discussion, but I remember the thoughts and feelings the discussion prompted in me. It seems to me that while everyone loves to get a good deal, that is not what God got with us. John 3:16 tells us that He paid the very best heaven had to offer for us! He got ripped off!!!!! His love for us must be so great for Him to have paid that kind of price. When I became a Christian, I remember feeling so unworthy, so humbled and so grateful for my salvation. I came up out of the waters of baptism, ready to take on the world, ready to tell each and every person I met about the Gift I had just received. (Hopefully that sounds familiar to many of you). I couldn't wait to share the Good News and that is exactly what I did. I told everyone, the trash man, the newspaper boy, the Avon lady, the homeless woman on the corner, the alcoholic next door neighbor. No one came into my immediate vicinity without receiving an invitation to church, a promise to pray for them and an offer to help with any need. As the years passed, I became more selective with my invites and offers. Perhaps I got burned too many times. Perhaps I grew tired of being taken advantage of. Perhaps I just became weary.
And so, I began looking at people differently. I wanted some easy "catches". I wanted to convert those who I just knew would hear the Word, believe it and make the commitment. I wanted people who were middle class, like me and who would not require much "maintenance" on my part. I wanted someone whose only need was salvation. (Other needs, physical needs made them too labor intensive). I became very adept at deciding which lost person was "worth" my time and my efforts. And as a result, my evangelistic efforts were less than fruitful.
Then, I had an epiphany---one that caused me to weep ----and pray---- and repent. It occurred to me, that God paid the exact same price for each of us and that when I decided one was unworthy, I was going around "marking them down", "discounting" them. As if, in doing this, they became less of a bargain to God.
Even now, as I write this, I am ashamed. When I begged God's forgiveness, I pleaded with Him to help me see people as souls---souls whose greatest need is Him. I prayed He would help me find ways to meet their physical needs, because that is what His Son did. I asked Him to make me better. (I did not ask to be more fruitful. I was convicted that the other changes would bear fruit and in abundance). I realized that I too, am unworthy and like the ones I had discounted, I was no deal.
I may be the only one who has forgotten the cost of redemption. I may be the only one who has been unfruitful because I only planted in my own flower pot. I may be the only one who looked at others and decided how much of my effort and consequently how much of Christ's blood they were worth. But, I don't think so. And so today, I encourage all of us to make a concerted effort to look at the souls around us the way HE looks at them---worth dying for.

Neva
II Corinthians 5:15 "And he died for all . . ."