PAYING A SACRIFICIAL PRICE

There is a classic story... about a little boy who built a sailboat and did too good a job of it. When it was all finished, he took his new little craft down to the lake, set it down in the water and waited for a breeze to set it in motion. He had not long to wait for it was such a beautifully designed ship that almost immediately it began to move and rapidly gather speed. Realizing that it was getting away from him, he frantically tried to catch it. However, it quickly sailed beyond his grasp and it was gone.

A few weeks later as he was walking downtown, he looked in the window of a second hand store. And yes, there it was, unmistakably his boat. He rushed into the shop and shouted at the proprietor, "That's my boat in your window!" He picked it up and started to walk out with it.

"Hey, sonny, you can't do that," said the proprietor. "I bought it from a young man who brought it in just yesterday."

"It's my boat," the little boy kept repeating. "See." And he pointed to the bottom of the boat where he had carved his initials.

"You want the boat, you have to pay." Tears gathered in the little boy's eyes and he begged the owner of the store to hold it for him until he could save enough money to buy back what he had worked so hard to build. It would take a lot of sacrifice, but he had created it and to him it was worth whatever it took to save it.

As finally he walked out of the store holding the boat close to him, he was heard saying, "You're my boat. Twice you are my boat: first when I created you and second when I bought you with my sacrifice."

…First God created us and then He paid a sacrificial price to redeem us. He did it because He loves us and could not, would not, have it any other way.

-- Rev. V. Neil Wyrick in a sermon titled "Out of Tune, Out of Sync -- What to Do?"


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