Sold by a mother who was desperate.
Two-month-old Danny had spent the nights of his short life in a dresser drawer before he was sold for a single cigarette. His birth mother had run away from home at 13 and by 1963 was carrying on an affair with a married man. She brought her 2-month, 3-day-old son to the door of the trailer home owned by Jimmie and Annie Brizendine where she traded him for one Pall Mall cigarette. As she turned him over and walked away from his life, she said, “I can be a mother and have a kid, but I can’t be a mother who raises him.”
But those early days were difficult in Danny’s new home where both Jimmie and Annie were holding down jobs to make ends meet. Annie said, “Danny wasn’t eating real well. He was sick; I was sick. I told my husband I didn’t think we could keep him. And he said, ‘They threw him away; we have to take him.’” Twenty-four years would pass before Danny ever met his birth mother again. He knew only the struggles of his teen years in an adoptive family. When he finally met his birth mother, his eyes were opened. As Danny puts it, “When I saw her, I realized how good I’d had it.”
Bought by a God Who Is Love
I, too, was once helplessly poor. But unlike Danny, I was trapped in a mess of my own making — sin. Just like Isaiah could say about Israel, “Your iniquities have separated between you and your God” (Isaiah 59:22But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear. (Isaiah 59:2)), my sins had ruptured my relationship to God and opened me up to the consequences of those sins.
But God beautifully expresses the deep value He placed on me and so many others. Unlike Danny who appeared suddenly and unexpectedly on the doorstep of a trailer home, God came purposefully searching for those He valued: “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it” (Matthew 13:45-4645Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: 46Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it. (Matthew 13:45‑46)). Danny was traded for a cigarette — I was bought by the precious blood of Christ. “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold ... but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:18-1918Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; 19But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: (1 Peter 1:18‑19)).
You can know the deep love of God and come to know Him as your Father too. He says to all who recognize they have sinned and need to be rescued, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:3131And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. (Acts 16:31)). Will you believe?