Demand

Psalms 8:4 -(the Message)
3-4 I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous,
your handmade sky-jewelry,
Moon and stars mounted in their settings.
Then I look at my micro-self and wonder,
Why do you bother with us?
Why take a second look our way?

(New International Version)
4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?[a]

The car in the picture is a Morgan. Morgans have been built by raving sports car enthusiasts since around 1900. That's over a hundred years, and that places them squarely at the top of the pile when you compare any automaker's number of years of continuous operation. I love Morgans. They are a very interesting blend of old and new - I'm talking now about the new cars - they have kept the very important things that make them what they are. Iconic styling cues such as the slab-sided sweeping front fenders and other things have been there from the earliest models and you can still find echoes of those very same things designed into the latest models. So what's the point?

Things like this endure for a reason - because people continue to value them. That creates a Demand for the product. As long as that demand is there, the company will continue to produce and sell them. For big prices. And it doesn't take millions of people, as there is for most production-line automobiles produced around the world today - but for every Morgan that shows up for sale, there seem to be a line of buyers waiting to bid.

And these cars do exact a price from their owners which goes beyond just the purchase price - the older ones have wooden frames, spoke wheels, aluminum bodywork, and many other designs features which dictate special care and maintenance. And if you want to restore one of these, you can get parts, but be prepared to pay a lot. Yet people do restore them, people do own them, people do take them around to car shows, and people do drive them. And in the case of the newest models, they are amazingly expensive, take a month to hand-build, yet there is a waiting list of people anxious to buy. I owned a very similar British open-top sports car when I was young. I completely restored it from the ground up, painted it red, had to do some form of repair or maintenance almost every weekend - yet I loved the car, and loved every minute behind the wheel.

Again - it's because people value these things. Not everyone - but enough people do. What brought this to the front of my thinking today is this - a challenge that seems to be pounding in my little Chas-brain:

"What do I value?"

I don't have the cash nor the time to own a Morgan of any vintage. Yet I do have some things which take money and time. And I continue to own those things. Why? I value them. I have friends and relatives who say I should get rid of them, some even offer to help me take them to the dump, or to a donation station, or load them into the nearest dumpster. But they simply don't value them as I do, so they do not understand.

Sort of like God loving us. Why? What is so special about us? We need so much, cost so much, take all kinds of special storage, tons of high maintenance, and we so often act as if we deserve all the attention God lavishes upon us. But the only reason I can see for God to do all that He has done, including sending His Son to die for us, is that

He values us.