Freedom's Cost
If someone gives something to you and you turn around and give it to someone as a gift, does it have the same significance or value as a gift you go out and buy?
Araunah said, "Why has my lord the king come to his servant?" David said, "To buy the threshing floor from you in order to build an altar to the LORD, so that the plague may be averted from the people." Then Araunah said to David, "Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him; here are the oxen for the burnt offering, and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king." And Araunah said to the king, "May the LORD your God respond favorably to you." But the king said to Araunah, "No, but I will buy them from you for a price; I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing." So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. - 2 Samuel 24:21-24
In today's reading, David opts out of receiving a gift in favor of buying them. Is he crazy?
It was Thomas Payne who said, “What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; it's dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”
Payne was talking about the price of freedom, but both Payne and King David understood the need for true value in what we obtain and what we give away.
I wonder if this lesson in value is something we can learn today. Is the freedom we enjoy today too easily obtained? Are we so far removed from the cost of it that we fail to see how costly it is to maintain?
David knew he couldn't offer something to God that cost him nothing, for what is the sacrifice in that? If I give away what I get for free, I give away nothing.
On the other hand, if I have to work hard to gain something, like security, freedom, rights, when I offer these things to others, I do so knowing how valuable they are to me, and hopefully to them.
So, how do we regain the value of something we have given away at no price for so long?
How do we put saltiness back into the salt that has lost its flavor, to use a metaphor from Jesus?
Perhaps we can't. Maybe we need to find ourselves struggling once again to win back what was lost, so that we will value it again.
Maybe that is why we find ourselves fighting the same battles over and over again. Our memories are short, and what we receive without pain is too easily thrown away.
More to come...