I remember that old Smith Barney (I think it was) commercial where John Houseman (I think he was the actor) used to opine that whatever Smith Barney did they did it the old fashioned way: they earned it. Nothing frivolous about Smith Barney. No freebees with them. If it is free, it really is not worth anything. We get what we pay for -- and all the rest of those sage bits of wisdom we were raised on.
For the most part those words of wisdom are true perhaps because we make them true and have learned from experience that, in fact, there is much wisdom and truth in them. The old saw among clergy is that a parish in debt is a parish alive. If there are no real money worries, the people tend to become lax. That is not always or even for the most part true, but we tend to believe it anyway, maybe because most churches always seem to have money problems. Or, if for instance, we are given a free ticket to some event, even an event with a hard-to-get ticket, we are prone to not take that event as seriously as the one we paid full price for and had to scratch and claw just to get in line to be able to purchase that ticket.
The real truth, of course, is that the most important possessions we have as far as our faith is concerned are free gifts. We did nothing, absolutely nothing, to earn them -- like life itself, like the grace of God, like forgiveness of sins, like eternal life-in-death. Yet because they are free, we often deem them frivolous in that we truly do not appreciate them for what they are nor make use of them as we should nor believe them to be as real as they are.
It is not that we take them for granted. Would that we would. We would be better off if we did. We would be more content with life and be better able to deal with the trials and tribulations that come our way.
Rather, instead of assuming that God always forgives us and living a life of The Forgiven, we sometimes cannot understand how God or anyone else could ever forgive us for something we just said or did. Instead of assuming that God's grace will always be enough, we sometimes act as if the situation is hopeless and we are helpless. Instead of believing that the bad can be redeemed, we give up hope., and so on and on and on.
The free gifts of God are simply that: free. But that is not what is important. What is important is not that we did anything to deserve or earn them. What is important is that they are gifts of God. Because of that, they can never be frivolous, or undervalued. In fact, we cannot put a price on any of them. They should be so valuable that we treasure them as we would treasure the most priceless material possession we might wish to possess.
From a human point of view, which is the only view we have, perhaps because these God-given gifts cannot be grasped like we can grab hold of the world's most valuable diamond or cannot be earned by the sweat of our brow, we often fail to realize just how valuable they are. We do so at our own loss.
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