My wife and I went thrifting while on vacation.  I browsed the books looking for a treasured tome.  

The store had gone to the trouble of sorting the books.  But they were sorted, not by author, nor were they alphabetized.  They were not arranged according to genre nor were the hardbacks separated from the paperbacks.   They were arranged according to color. 

The blues were bunched, and the greens were grouped and so on.  BUT – who buys a book by its color?

Do the envious look for green books?  Do those in debt seek the red ones? Do the cowardly search for the yellow and the loyal look for true blue books?  Do singles seek little black books? 

This was a dilemma for me for multiple reasons.  I am somewhat color blind.

It made me wonder though.  Does God have a sifting method for humanity?  We do.  Too often we rudely catalog people according to race, sex, ethnic origin and so on.

But if God were to ever sort us all out – how might we be classified?

Would He sort us by height?  No!  He gave the key to the Kingdom of Israel to tall Saul and the key to the Kingdom of God to short Zacchaeus.  Height didn’t make a difference to God. 

Would He favor the popular?  No way! Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek…” – Matthew 6:5

Certainly, the strong would stand out in God’s sorting system!  But no.  In fact, Paul argued that God prefers to work through a person’s weakness. – 2 Corinthians 12:9-10.

What about our girth.  Is that a weighty matter to God?  It can’t be – He saved me!

Okay but what about appearance?  Kids often cruelly categorize others based on appearance.  Will God do that as well?

If He did Jesus would be at the end of line because the prophet Isaiah described Him as having “no special appearance” – Isaiah 53:2.   This is good because I grew up thinking my middle name was “homely.”

And you can forget about race, ethnic origin, economic status, and sex.  God won’t be discriminating based on any of those factors.  “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female—for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  – Galatians 3:28

There is only one factor that God will use when He one day is required to sort out humanity.   

Jesus said, “For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” – John 3:16   In the end there will be only two bins of people – those who have believed in Jesus and looked to Him to wash them from their sin.  And there will be those who haven’t.

The future for one is eternal life, the other is to perish.

Jesus continued, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. (17)

This tells me that God is not willing that any should perish.  He sent Jesus not to scorch us, but to save us. 

We tend to sort out people according to factors over which they have no control.  God will sort them based on the choice they make. 

It’s either one or the other.  Your religion is immaterial.  Your denomination is irrelevant.  You might even choose to punt and maintain that there is no God – which doesn’t really matter if indeed God truly exists. 

What will matter in the end is what you do with Jesus.

So – what will you do with Jesus? 

A prayer:  Lord I wasted the first 19 years of my life without You.  Please don’t let others wait that long. 

This has been Jim Johnson and pickleheavenpress.com

May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Scripture passages are from the NETBible ®