What is a baseball worth?

This summer, our church had a yard sale. Someone had donated a whole box of baseballs. The marked price was 2$ each. At some point during the sale, everything was marked down to half price, so they went for $1 each. This week, there was a baseball that sold for $752,467. So, I ask the question again...What is a baseball worth? What is it that makes that ball worth so much more than the ones on the yard sale table? The reason that the second ball is so much more valuable, has nothing to do with the ball itself, the reason that ball is valuable is because it is associated with an event. A once in a lifetime occurence.

There are some people that are blessed with a healthy self esteem. There are many (my self included) that tend to derive their sense of self worth from something external. Some feel valuable because of what they can achieve, some feel valuable because of how they look, some feel valuable because of what they have. I fear that one of satan's very effective tools is to take away whatever it is that we base our value on....the athlete gets hurt, the beauty queen ages, the millionaire loses everything. Then where do you go?

Just like the baseball, our true value has nothing to do with what we can do, what we look like or what we have. Our true value is based on our association with an event, a once in an eternity occurence. To be honest, I don't fully grasp the depth of the sacrifice that was made for me. I do know, however, that the Creator of the universe was desperately searching for Plan B.

For years, I've thought something like this "If you group everybody together, then that group would be worth Jesus dying for". Someone changed my perspective on that when they said "The true power of Jesus' sacrifice comes when you realize that if you were the only person on the planet, he would have done the same thing." I don't know that I've fully come to terms with that, but I'm farther along than I used to be. I guess that's what transformation is all about.