Why The Big Spoon?

Thursday morning I researched sources for a precise word and for an obscure Bible passage, but I couldn’t find either one.

I need to learn more about dictionaries and God’s word. Frustrated at research, I gave up and read a murder mystery. Heavy rain outside made for happy, drowsy, cozy reading inside.

Then a thought nagged me.

I feel I need to clarify two things I wrote yesterday.

First, I wrote of myself as a representative of Christ. Representative is not quite the right word; it creates a mental image of someone important, like an ambassador in tux with a red sash across his chest presiding at a state dinner in the embassy.

That’s not me.

A better term might be salesman’s sample.

I am a salesman’s sample of Christ’s. Something a salesman might pull out of his case to show potential customers the manufacturing process.

It’s not the finished product but gives customers a general idea of how the product is made..

Take what can be done with old tires for example.

The salesman wants to promote a finished product such as surgical gloves or garden mulch or road paving material or a cutting mat for your kitchen. So he begins by pulling out a handful of shredded rubber which was once a castoff tire and he explains the manufacturing process as he tells how “Green” his product is because it recycles old tires and turns them into something useful.

That’s what I was trying to convey when I said I represent Christ; I don’t represent Christ; I represent what He can do with an old tire off the junk heap.

He specializes in that sort of thing.

That’s what He does with people.

He displays samples to show what He is able to do with the lousiest material.

It’s the sick who need a Physician, not the healthy.

In one speech, Moses told the people, “Thou art an holy people…The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto Himself above all people upon the face of the earth”.

That’s something to brag about… Or is it.

Then Moses told them why they’d been chosen.

He said God chose you not because you’re great but because you are the lowest, sorriest, most stiff-necked, piss-poor, no good, sorry, no-account, complaining, aggravating , annoying, hard-hearted people He could find.

He chose you not because you are worthy “But because the Lord loved you”.

He chose you to show what He could make of such cast-off material.

The above is not an exact quote of the words from Deuteronomy 7, but you get the gist of what Moses said.

That idea comes again and again in Scripture: that God chooses people not because they are superior but because they are pathetic.

In his very long speech, about ten chapters long, Moses went on to say, “The LORD thy God is among you, a mighty God and terrible…The LORD your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward… He is thy praise, and He is thy God”.

The whole thing is not about us, but about God.

Of course Moses was speaking to Jews fresh out of Egypt; but years later, Saint Paul said much the same things to the Christians at Ephesus.

He said that God saves us not because we’re great guys, but because He scrapes the bottom of the barrel.

Paul characterized the saved as the lowest, sorriest, most stiff-necked, piss-poor, no good, sorry, no-account, complaining, aggravating , annoying, hard-hearted people God could find.

Paul says we were putrefying dead and breeding maggots, children of disobedience, living in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, children of wrath.

“But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, hath quickened us together with Christ and raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus… We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus…”

Salesman’s samples.

God shows off the raw material and what He’s doing with it, how He’s recycling us and creating beauty out of ashes.

To scrape the bottom of the barrel for His raw material, God used a tool.

Think of it as the Big Spoon.

Had He not been going for the very bottom, He would not have needed the Big Spoon.

Christ died on that Big Spoon.

It’s called a cross.

The second thing I’d like to clarify from what I wrote about yesterday concerns old cast-off spare tires.

The old tire collection I’m helping with is a public service for my neighbors; I assure you that no old tires clutter my own backyard garden. I keep my own yard clean and trimmed.

The only spare tire at our house is the one around my waist.