Aspirations
A young man recently mentioned a particular thing that he said was on his bucket list – an item that he wanted to possess at some point. I have never thought of myself as having such a list, any more than I had a career plan when starting out on the life of work. However, there is something that I have wanted to own for a long time – a grandfather clock. This has been an aspiration, but for most of my life, an unnecessary, frivolous and unaffordable expense. Jean has been aware of this and suggested that I look to buy one as her Christmas present to me this year. Last week, I found one on eBay that met my criteria – aged, but not decrepit, handsome rather than fussy, and not having Westminster chimes (too much noise!). One further, and important requirement, was for it to be reasonably priced. I was excited to win the auction for a figure that we were quite happy about, and arranged to collect the clock from the seller in Birmingham – another criterion, as this isn’t too distant from Worcester, where we live.
Repairs
We already have two old pendulum wall clocks, one that we bought as an anniversary gift to each other some twenty years ago, and our original one that Jean has known all of her life – literally. She was born under this timepiece in her parents’ sitting room. Accordingly, that clock has huge sentimental value to Jean, and a little less so to me, but is virtually valueless to anyone else, being a very common, basic-grade specimen from its era. It has run reliably for most of its long life, but has cost us dearly, having needed to go to a repairer on two occasions in recent years. The first time was due to my ignorance – I thought it would be good to lubricate the mechanism, but I used WD40, which everyone in the know tells me is the last thing I should have applied. I almost get the impression that plastering it with axle grease would have been better! So, it had to be stripped, cleaned and otherwise returned to good order. Then something else went wrong, a broken winding spring, which required another costly repair. About a year ago, something else broke. I was doing my weekly clock winding when the key sprang back vigorously and whipped against my thumbnail – very painful! This meant another trip to the repairer for an estimate, resulting in a frightening quotation that I simply couldn’t stomach. I know that this timepiece is important to Jean, but I struggled with the idea of the latest repair costing more than we had already laid out in total, quite recently, for previous work.
The Fix
These stories are interlinked. In view of my reluctance to pay out more money, Jean and I had concluded that I should try to remedy the current problem myself, although I wasn’t exactly confident that this would be possible. However, the man I collected our latest timepiece from was very friendly and extremely helpful. From my description of what had occurred, he diagnosed the exact problem and explained that it was a straightforward fix for me to do. He even gave me a scrap mechanism from which I could extract the replacement part that was needed. The result is that I would be able to both repair our existing wall clock and also purchase the new Grandfather clock, for less than half of the repair cost estimate that we had received. My heart was rejoicing in the Lord’s provision as I journeyed back from my Birmingham trip. I was very happy with our eBay purchase and delighted to know that I would now be able to bring Jean’s special wall clock back to life for her.
Values
You may be wondering, what is the spiritual significance of this story? One could see the outlay to purchase my grandfather clock as an investment – having done some restoration work on the case, it has to have a market value of at least as much as we paid for it, potentially more, as it is a well-made antique. Contrast this with Jean’s wall clock. That has already cost us at least ten times more than we could ever hope to sell it for; it has minimal market value. And yet it has inestimable sentimental value. This has the least handsome and well-made case, but it is by far the most treasured of the three. We live in a world that tends to rate things according to their commercial value. Even people are rated by their appearance, intelligence, achievement and cultural conformity. Thankfully, God does not see us this way – his appreciation of us is not based on commodity value, or how we stack up against everyone else. He values us because he values us. Not unlike Jean and her clock, where she has a personal reason for treasuring it that has zero currency outside of our family. God doesn’t look upon us in terms of our usefulness to him; he values us by entirely different criteria. I don’t believe that he even considers how he might be able to use us once we surrender our lives to him. He chose to love us, redeemed us at inestimable cost and called us to be his own (1 Peter 2:9). Within the thinking of this world, such a choice simply doesn’t compute. Even if it were to make sense, then the world probably wouldn’t choose you or me, but God did – he has. He chose to love us before the beginning of the world (Ephesians 1:4a), in a similar, albeit incomparable, way to how Jean experienced her clock from the moment of her birth, if not before. He didn’t make a last-minute decision to draw us to himself; he had this all planned out long, long ago, such is his love for us.
There are others
We need to have God’s perspective as we look upon our fellow human beings. This applies within the church – those others whom he has called to himself (1 Corinthians 1:9), and in the world – those whom he may be calling us to minister to with the good news of the gospel. We aren’t immune to adopting prejudicial attitudes about the value of other souls. I have prejudices, but I hope to recognise these for what they are, and to view others as God sees them. We won’t fulfil our responsibility to the Great Commission if we only reach out to people whom we like, or who we view as being similar to us. If we are truly his agents, then we need to have the mind of Christ – 1 Corinthians 2:15,16.