The Exchange Rate That Was Never Real

There's a kitchen table somewhere back in most of our childhoods. A piece of paper on it — a report card, maybe, or something you carried home like it was made of glass. You watched a face read it, and that face did math. This much pride. This much disappointment.

Nobody sat you down and explained the exchange rate. You just learned it, the way you learn which stairs creak. And once you know a rate exists, you start checking it everywhere — in a review email, in a phone call home, in the half-second look on someone's face before they say your name.

Then Isaiah shows up shouting across a marketplace, and he's not selling anything:

Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Say that slowly and feel it refuse to make sense. Buy — without money. That's not a discount on the old system. That's a different economy.

Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread?

Not your money. Your performance. Your good behavior. The version of yourself you polish up before walking back into the room where the rate gets set.

The price was always fake.

What's the piece of paper you're still holding up for somebody to grade?

Lean more this coming Sunday as we explore God's economics in the sermon...