Redemption Center
By Phillip E. Hudson
When I was just a boy I remember my mother saving S&H Green Stamps. I know by writing on this subject I am greatly dating myself; nevertheless, I write on. If you are not familiar with Green Stamps, they were given as a gratuity for purchasing a certain amount of groceries from the grocery store or maybe filling up with gasoline at the local filling station. They were sort of a consolation prize for children of responsibility-laden parents. It was as if the parents paid the price and their offspring reaped the reward. (Not much has changed over the years has it?)
The average American home in the fifties and sixties probably experienced many a quiet evening around the fireplace licking and sticking the piles of Green Stamps into the little paperback books provided by your local retailer. There was also a wonderful book that came to our house about every six months called the S&H Green Stamps redemption catalog! As a child it became a bright spot in my life when the stamp catalog arrived. I really did not understand the word “Redemption” on the cover of the catalog—all I knew was when you got enough books of stamps collected you could carry them to the Redemption Center and trade them for the most wonderful things in the world!
I never knew the price that was paid for the goods or services; all I wanted was the benefit of the stamps. I knew that thirteen books of stamps equaled a Red Rider BB gun or maybe a new Western Flyer bicycle.
We saved stamps all the time. I would search the seat cushions and the car for stamps; I would beg relatives for stamps. My world, as a child, revolved around the stamps. Yet, regardless of how many stamps we saved or how many books we possessed, I knew that we would have to trade them in at the Redemption Center if we wanted to receive something wonderful.
You know, in pursuit of happiness we often live our lives on a quest to attain things that are really of no value without redemption. Little books filled with paper stamps were of no value unless you were willing to trade. Them in The Apostle Paul said our lives are like an” epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men” (II Corinthians 3:2). An epistle is a letter or a short book. Paul knew that the book of man would one day need to be brought to the Redemption Center (the Church, God’s dwelling place) and traded in for something brand new.”Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things become new” (II Corinthians 5:17).
Maybe there are a few old books in your life that could use a trip to the Redemption Center. God’s catalog, the Bible, has many wonderful things waiting in store for those who are willing to make the trade. You may be standing at the counter with your head bent low longing for something new in your life. Go ahead, lay the books on the line and “look up for your redemption draweth nigh” (Luke 21:28).
In pursuit of happiness we often live our lives on a quest to attain things that are really of no value without redemption.
From, “Insight”/March-April 2008/Page 2, by Phillip E. Husdson
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