Observation: The Assyrian army has conquered the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Now Hezekiah, King of the Southern Kingdom of Judah, offers the Assyrian king a fortune in silver and gold to stop an imminent invasion of Jerusalem, the capital. Not only does the king empty out his own house treasury, but he empties the Temple treasury, and even strips the Temple doors of the gold he himself had had overlaid. Desperate times call for desperate measures. This to me seems like the ancient equivalent of "pawning the family China set."
Application: in our garage, we have a very well protected box marked, "mother's good China." I believe it was an inheritance from my wife's grandmother. Frankly, with four kids in the house and few high profile dinner guests, we've never used it, but there it sits, safe and sound.
I'm interested in this phenomenon of the "family China set", the nice dishes you only ever got out once a year or so, because they were precious, and especially during the Depression era, they may have been more useful in a pinch than a savings account, which might be "here today, gone tomorrow." But once it's sold off, it's gone for good.
I think there are spiritual treasures like that, handed down over the generations, that maybe get less use than they should, but are there if we need them... unless we decide to sell them off in a time of need. To me, one of the most important is our concept of "The Gospel": God's story is fundamentally Good News, not about what we should do but what God has already done for us.
Our sense of Gospel is like the family China set: it's not the meal itself (Only God's Word can sustain us) but it's an essential container, a way of holding God's Word, that we don't use nearly often enough. And though times may get desperate, just as they did for Hezekiah, we need to make sure we don't sell off these ideas too cheaply--or at all.
What do you think? What are some other Christian values or concepts that we dare not sell off?
Prayer: God, when desperate times call for desperate measures, remind us of our treasures from you...and deliver us. Amen.
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