Trash and Treasure

She was the kind of woman whose biography would have needed very few exclamation points. Her invisibility was her most striking feature. Few recalled her, and none remembered any story in which she was either villain or heroine. She was the very incarnation of average. Many nights, staring at the ceiling, she wondered if anyone would even pretend to miss her when she died, much less mourn for her. Yet while spikes suspended him midair, and sweaty blood formed rivulets that ran down his face, Jesus had this woman on his mind. He let go of life to hold her. Greater love hath no man than he had for her. He'd go to hell and back to have her in heaven with him. She was his everything so he gave his everything for her.

For she was the kind of woman whom others saw as an everyday stone but whom Jesus knew was a pearl of great price. So he went and sold all that he had, and bought that pearl, not with gold and silver, but with the crimson currency pulsing through his veins.

She was the kind of woman in whom I see myself, in whom thousands of us see our own reflections. We are but a drop in the ocean of humanity. So often our lives seem pointless, a vain existence in a world that worships vanity. Who are we, really, but a bag of blood and bones, in which are mixed in bittersweet memories and the shards of shattered dreams and broken hearts?

We would not recognize ourselves if we looked at ourselves through the eyes of God. Where we see trash, he sees treasure. Where we see sin he sees righteousness. His vision is 20/20 love, which transforms his beloved into a lovely thing. It is like the picture of Dorian Gray reversed; whereas we see our horrid portrait of a stained life, God sees perfect beauty, because he sees us clothed in Jesus.

To be loved by God changes everything, for his love transforms everything about us. It is a love unearned, unalterable, unrelenting in its pursuit of us, his pearls of greatest price, for whom Jesus gave his all.