Volume 28, No. 47                          
December 14, 2003
                 
Just the Ticket

  When Larry and Leita Hatch stopped at a Burger King while visiting their son in Nebraska, Larry bought only a soft drink.  He peeled away a Cash Is King game sticker and instantly became the only $1 million winner in the whole country.  Barely able to contain his excitement, he went to a nearby grocery store and made a copy of the winning ticket.  But, when he got to his son’s house, Larry couldn’t find the original!  Three hours later, he calmly picked up the ticket right where he’d left it — in the grocery store, on the floor in the checkout line.

   In an even more bizarre turn of events, Alexandra Sergeyev and some coworkers chipped in to buy three lottery tickets for a new car.  She gave one of the tickets to her husband, Ivan, to keep in a safe place but, soon after, he died of a heart attack.  Right after the funeral, Alexandra made three disturbing discoveries:  the winning ticket was the one she’d given her husband;  the ticket was in his good suit;  and that suit was the one he was buried in!  It gets worse.

   When Ivan’s grave was opened up, authorities discovered the body was missing, and the winning lotto ticket had been claimed. A police investigation found that grave robbers had resold the casket to an undertaker and peddled Sergeyev’s suit to a thrift shop.  Someone bought the suit, found the ticket and cashed it in.  Though Alexandra eventually got the new car, she never recovered her husband’s body.

   In most cases, even if you have the winning ticket, there’s a deadline.  Just ask Duane and Nancy Black of Arizona.  When they read about an unclaimed lottery ticket worth $1.8 million, they decided to look through their stack of old tickets.  To their utter amazement, they found the winner!  They immediately caught a plane to Phoenix and walked into the lotto office to claim their prize... two hours before the six-month expiry of their ticket!

   Some day, your number will be up  The big question is, will you claim the prize God made available through so much personal sacrifice?  To share an eternity with Him in heaven, you need a way in.  Jesus is your Ticket.  Unless He’s the focus of your life, doing good in the world won’t do you a world of good, despite what the do-it-yourselfers say.  “I am the way, the truth and the life,” said Jesus.  “No one can come to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

   Yet so many of us are careless with the Ticket.  We stick him away in the junk drawers of our highly-compartmentalized lifes where He’s out of sight, out of mind until something shakes us out of our complacency.  Even then, He often gets lost in the bustle of our busyness, trampled by other priorities and ignored not only by us, but the others who assume He’s worthless because we’ve left him behind. 

   That’s all the more sad considering the extreme torture and humiliation Jesus went through for us.  At the end of it all, our access to the prize was buried and, when a loved one went to retrieve the body, it was missing.  Not violated in death, but raised in victory!  Victory that qualifies each of us for the forgiveness of our sins, the removal of our guilt and the end of our exile.  

   All you have to do is claim the prize.  Putting your trust in a copy of the Ticket won’t be good enough. Faith in a Christian parent, partner or preacher won’t cut it. You need a personal, passionate relationship with the only One who can usher you into the presence of your King.

   “All honour to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for it’s by his boundless mercy that He’s given us the privilege of being born again.  Now we live with a wonderful expectation because Jesus Christ rose again from the dead.  For God has reserved a priceless inheritance for his children.  It’s kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay... So be truly glad! There’s wonderful joy ahead...” (1 Pet. 1:3-6)

   We can’t get to heaven alone, but Jesus is just the ticket.  There’s a time limit though, and we don’t know the expiry date.  So make sure He’s yours — and you’re His — long before you check out.

By Rick Gamble, published in Cross Current, the weekly newsletter of the Followers of Christ congregation in Brantford, Ontario, Canada.  Reprint at will in not-for-profit publications.  To subscribe, contact sgamble@bfree.on.ca