“Consideration is the concept of legal value in connection with contracts. It is anything of value promised to another when making a contract. It can take the form of money, physical objects, services, promised actions, abstinence from a future action, and much more. Consideration to create a legally enforceable contract entails a bargained for, legal detriment incurred by the promisee OR a legal benefit to the promisor.” 1
Yesterday morning, as I prepared for my day, knowing it could be a difficult one, this word “consideration” seemed to lodge in my heart. Still there this morning, I will take that as a need to elaborate by way of my electronic “journal.”
As a Realtor, I know that no contract is complete without two signatures and some exchange of consideration. Most already know where I am going with this, yet my purpose for this blog is that it serve as a means of processing “out loud” the thoughts that occur to me in my early morning rituals with God.
Even that statement gives me pause! I, John Bost, a human (humus…soil) have a morning ritual with God? What a glorious thought, that the King of Heaven would know me by name, or as Jesus put it, know even the very hairs on my head and would await, literally lean over the portals of heaven each morning, with renewed grace, hoping I will give Him audience! I am a friend of God!
Got carried away there for a moment!
What gives me the right to believe that I hold the affection of the Being who constructed a Universe with galaxies untold, adorning the heavens, and for no other reason, than for me to gaze upward each morning, as I pick up my morning paper? Really? Is there that much love, power and creativity within One being, and that Being focused on me, as if I were the only occupant of His entire creation? Yes!!
Just as young John Luther will arrive today for the second time in our house, all my Universe will turn to focus on him! So the Father loves me.
But what gives me that right, secures that hope? Yes, even when I act out in a lesser way than one would think that a party in that position would behave? When I, the promisee, fall short of the glory of God?
There is a binding contract, a testament, a last will offered on behalf of a promisor and this one secured by virtue of Divine blood, the highest consideration. For God, so loved the world that He gave His only Son! Even beyond that, He has provided a deep assurance to carry me in His personal absence; that I might be encouraged when life becomes difficult, perhaps too difficult for my own understanding to suffice:
“Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” II Cor 1:22 NIV.
Christ’s blood is now forever held in escrow, guaranteeing my legal right (righteousness) to eternal and abundant life; His Spirit now forever stamped on my heart as a seal,“guaranteeing what is to come.”
Selah (“pause, and think of that“)!
1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consideration
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