Come and Buy

“Hey all, the next round is on me!”  You hear that phrase a lot in movies when someone is celebrating in a bar.  In all my years of drinking in bars, I never once heard someone offer everyone in the bar the next round.  Does this really happen?

I guess it did happen to me once.  It wasn’t in a bar, mind you, and it wasn’t a round of drinks either.  But once I drank what this Guy was offering, I haven’t even wanted to go back to a bar or drink alcohol again.  His stuff was so much better.

He came up to me and said, “Every one who thirsts, come to the waters; And you who have no money come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good, And delight yourself in abundance.” (Isaiah 55:1-2)

And so I bought some of what He was offering, it was free after all, not cheap, but free.  I drank deeply of the Living water.  Ate my full of the broken bread from heaven.  I sipped from the cup of wine he shed for me, and grew from the milk of His word. 

Unlike the drink I was used to, indulging in what He offered didn’t cloud my mind; it made everything clear.  Maybe for the first time in my life, I felt like I could drive myself home, and He was kind enough to show me the path—I had wandered so far, and the road was a narrow one-way street, but it leads straight home. 

I asked the Man who gave me so much for so little how I could ever repay Him, and He said,  “As surely as you feed the hungry, give the thirsty something to drink, invite in the stranger, clothe the naked, and visit the sick and imprisoned in my name, you will have done it to me.” 

“What’s your name?” I asked desperate to know Him.

He face began to shine like the sun as He smiled deeply and said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son.

But I will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations. For the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death" (Revelation 21:6-7/Exodus 34:6-7)

Like the men of old, I fell before the Ancient of Days and worshipped.  I’ve been worshipping ever since and will be worshipping forevermore.  Come, come and buy without money; the next round is on Jesus!  Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come!