bar

My son is a diver and works occasionally for Caribbean Treasure Hunters, diving off the ship the New World Legacy. He has handled numerous bars of silver as the result of his dives and is therefore familiar with silver bars that have been in water for hundreds of years.

He was recently working in a condominium complex in Florida. The apartment he was working in was just off the lobby on the first floor, a high traffic area. On the first day, my son noticed an 'ugly metal bar' sitting on the floor of the condominium, holding open the front door of the condominium. He did not pay much attention to it, as did the numerous other pedestrians passing through the lobby area. On thesecond day, he had to move the bar in order to get some equipment in. He noticed that it was encrusted with material that is normally found only on metal objects that had been submerged in salt water for a considerable period of time. He also realized that the bar was not decayed. He thought to himself, surely this is not a bar of silver...it is too valuable to be sitting here as a door stop. So he looked at the bar carefully and discovered 'stampings' on the bar, indicating that it had been destined for Spain, and indeed it was a bar of silver.

Most people saw the bar as an ugly lead door stop, but my son saw something more. The person who owns it knows its value, but also knows that the average person has absolutely no idea of its worth...they never take the time nor the initiative to discover what the ugly bar really is. My son knows, and is incensed because such an historically valuable item is so taken for granted and being so abused.

Is this not the same as most of us do to Christ?

"But we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." (I Cor. 1:23-24)

-alan smith