Grand exchange

          
                 Grand Exchange

Ever gone to buy an item only to get back home and find out you paid a small amount of money in exchange for more items than you initially intended to take?
It doesn't seem fair to you, you feel as though you have cheated the seller.
Imagine the grass on a field, the little wildflower that grows on that field. It blooms in the morning just when the little rays of sunlight point at it, together with the cool morning dew on its skin but when left under the harsh conditions of the weather, it doesn't stand a chance at life. When trampled by passersby it lies low to the ground and dies, soon you cannot even see where the flower once blossomed ( Psalms 103:15‭-‬16).
        The sun that once shone to keep the flower alive, when it over shines it burns out the flower to ashes.
 The tree of life, on the other hand, is eternal, it strives all the harshest weather conditions if only this wildflower found a way to grow rather than on a field where it's life is endangered but find it's way to the terrain where the evergreen tree of life grew. It will trade its place to live in Eden, trade it's life burnt to ashes to live again as a beautiful flower no longer in the wild but in a garden, where it doesn't have to worry about the sun being too scorched, because it's in a garden where other tall trees are standing high and shielding it from the harsh rays of the sun.
An exchange, it's little life for a greater life to live like the tree of life.
       The grand exchange; trading little things for greater things it can't afford, like paying ashes in for beauty, fear for courage, mourning for gladness, despair for hope, loneliness for friendship, confusion for clarity, disbelief for faith, hate for love, strife for peace, brokenness for wholeness. It might seem unequal but the trader doesn't mind, he just wants to sell off his products and give his consumer maximum satisfaction.
     This is the type of exchange that goes on the moment you go into trade with God. The grand exchange is such that God looks at you and me with our dirt and brokenness, accepts them in exchange and says "I choose you, you are beautiful, you are my beloved, take my life and have it to the full, take eternal life, a new refined life, a life sinless and without blemish, a life full of grace and mercy, just keep taking and don't stop".
The shop is open with a big post on the front door "clearance sales" pick as much as you want for a little price. Trade in your old washed down, sin deflated life for something more beautiful, for an exquisite life. So you no longer live but Christ lives through you.

"...to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified"
Isaiah 61:3 KJV