On Church Auctions and Cheap Guitars

Tonight at my church we had our annual Birthday Bash, which, in brief summary, is a covered-dish dinner and a night of fellowship to celebrate everyone’s birthday at the same time (just so no one gets left out). Whether this is truly effective is not the point of this post. Instead, I wish to analyze a certain aspect of tonight’s festivities: the auction.

Yes, we had an auction at our birthday celebration. Several items were collected from donors within the church and from local businesses to be sold to the highest bidder in order to raise money to renovate our fellowship hall. It was kind of neat. I made the lady who was leading it use a podium and a hammer (since no gavels were to be found in the area) to officially end each item up for bids. I even grabbed a ping pong paddle to use as my signal for bidding. All in all, the auction was pretty fun. I bid on a few things, such as a wind chime (for my mom, of course - $5), a wooden fish-shaped wall hanger with hooks on it (not exactly sure what I’ll use it for, but it looked cool - $10), a homemade pound cake (just what I need when we still have half of my birthday cake left - $5), and the coup de grace, a Johnson guitar (because the deal was too good to pass up - $40).

It is true, I already own a guitar, and a fairly good one at that – a custom Takamine G-series guitar that I’ve had since high school. Plus, the Johnson guitar is not what you would really consider to be a top-of-the-line instrument. It’s really only worth about $100. Consequently, all things considered, I really did not need the Johnson that I bought, and yes, I could have held on to that $40. However, the guitar is worth twice that, and it came with a free gig bag, so I feel like I got a pretty good deal. Not to mention the fact that no one else was even remotely interested in it in the first place.

Now before you start thinking that I’m going to go hawk it on eBay, give me a minute to explain myself. No, I didn’t need the guitar, but I saw something that had good value on the verge of going to waste, and I felt that the cost was justifiable (not to mention the fact that I wanted to support our church fundraiser). After all, I can always use a spare to teach someone else how to play, to use as a camping/travel guitar so that I don’t ruin my other one, or to be able to keep one at the church so that I don’t have to lug my other one around all the time. Who knows, I might even end up giving it away to someone who would like a guitar but can’t afford one. The possibilities are endless.

When I think of my guitar purchase, I wonder if God had some of the same thoughts before sending Christ to die for us. Perhaps he saw us standing there on the chopping block, so to speak, and thought, “You know, there is a redeemable quality in that person. They are too good to waste. They are worth paying a price that others might deem as foolish.” So he paid the price for us through Christ. He didn’t need us. In all practical purposes, we were not worth the cost. It was not a wise investment. After all, God had the angels and all of creation at his disposal, to do with as he pleased. But he wanted us. We had a purpose in his eyes, and God thought that made us worthwhile.

$A 40 price tag for a guitar? Totally worth it. Jesus’ death as the cost for sinful people? Going once….going twice….sold.