13th July 2020

Last week I saw my first moneybox in an antiques shop at the Blue Mountains. It was one of those metal ones issued by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. I remember the day I proudly took it to the bank as a boy, heavy with pennies. I remember bringing back home an updated version, with the contents converted to the new decimal currency, and weighing half as much. I remember then my first dark thought about the banking system!

A second dark thought entered my mind last week when I saw it in a glass cabinet with its price tag: $38! I thought it would have been better for me not to have saved my money, but to have bought up all the moneyboxes I could find, and then to sell them fifty years later! Who would have thought that the container would be worth more than the contents!

The same miscalculation was made by the Greeks about the physical body when Paul started preaching the resurrection. It was a ludicrous idea that the mere container might have some useful value beyond death. It still seems so in the minds of Epicureans and Stoics today. But not for Paul. For he had on the road to his conversion met the One who had stepped out of His grave three days after they had pronounced Him dead. And that, for Paul, was an indisputable fact that he was prepared to bank on.

DM 13^th July 2020