Friday: Jesus the Redeemer of Waste Material
WEEK 40
FRIDAY
JESUS THE REDEEMER OF WASTE MATERIAL
Ephesians 5:3-10
We saw yesterday that uranium, the substance at the basis of atomic energy, was once thrown out on the scrap heap as worthless. It was thought by Indians on the Malabar Coast to be useful only to weight their coir rope and make it heavier, so it would sell for more money. A German, looking at this strange, heavy, black sand coiled into the strands of coir rope, wondered what it was. He discovered it was uranium sand, went to India, developed the sand, and made a fortune. Uranium used for the purposes of cheating! Uranium used for the purposes of obliterating cities! One day we will look back on both with horror. We are going to take this substance that was used for either scrap or base purposes, and we are going to transform the world for everybody, everywhere. A new world was in waste material, or material prostituted for low ends!
Jesus took the Zealot, a man who wanted to rebel against Rome by force, and harnessed his revolutionary zeal to the greatest revolution of all, the kingdom of God. He took the sex urges of Mary Magdalene, which had brought seven devils of lust to live within her, cleansed these urges, cast out the devils, and harnessed her urges to the new creation—the creation of new hopes, new loves, newborn souls. He took the “sons of thunder,” James and John, tamed their tempestuous tempers, and harnessed these drives toward kingdom goals. He took the man Peter, who was anything but rock, and turned him into a rock on which civilizations are built. He took the female sex (concerning whom the Jew thanked God that he was not born a woman, a leper, or a Gentile), cleansed her of inferiority, and made her the greatest depository of the spiritual life of the centuries. Jesus took his greatest persecutor, Saul, transformed him into the man who could write the most beautiful thing on love that has ever been written—the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians—and thus made love the greatest thing in the world. The man of hate set love at the center of virtues and illustrated it in himself. Jesus was the redeemer of waste materials.
O Jesus, how can I thank you enough that took me—a “child of waste”—and redeemed me and set my life to music, a discord become a concord? Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Today I shall probe into souls and look for pay dirt for the kingdom.