Author, educator and commentator Dr. James Denison has been pastor of Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas since June, 1998. Prior to that, he was pastor at churches in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as Midland (at First Baptist) and Mansfield, Texas.When are a pair of glasses, a pair of sandals, a bowl, a plate, and a pocket watch worth $1.8 million? When they belonged to Mohandas K. Gandhi. According to today's New York Times, the lot was sold at auction yesterday to Vijay Mallya, an Indian liquor and airline magnate who owns the company that makes Kingfisher beer.
The Indian government protested the sale, as did Gandhi's descendants. Mr. Mallya pledged to return the items to India for public display. But a court in New Delhi had issued an injunction to block the sale, so the matter is not yet resolved.
In a similar vein, today's Wall Street Journal tells us about a growing trend in home shopping, whereby people sell their clothes out of their closets in makeshift garage sales. Craigslist, a Web site with free local classified listings, says that its "clothing & accessories" category had 715,228 postings last month, more than double the 356,162 it had in February of last year.
What do you have that's worth more to someone else than it is to you? I cannot think of a single thing I own in that category. Trust me-you don't want to go in my closet. I only venture in that bastion of disorganization by necessity, and am happy to find something relatively unwrinkled to wear when I come out.
The closest thing to a marketable possession I own is my Rolex watch. I bought it for $10 the last time I took a tour group to Ephesus, from a shop which advertized "Genuine Fake Watches." It was purchased solely as a sermon illustration, and sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, just like the man who sold it to me. If I told you it was real and you believed me, I might make more money than it's worth. The same cannot be said for anything else in my possession.
What you own may not be of great value to others, but the One who owns you has a different perspective. He is less interested than anyone on the planet in the significance of your possessions, but he is more interested than anyone in the universe in you. When faced with the choice at Calvary, he decided that you are worth the death of his Son. He had already arranged time and human history so that his Son could die on your cross to pay for your sins. Now he has all of eternity to listen to your next prayer.
What is causing you to doubt your worth this morning? Measure that person or problem by the cross. What is your value to God? Will you agree with him?
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