Thirty Years of Service

 •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 5
 
R.A. West, a thirty-year employee of a gas and electric company, retired recently. They called to say his final pay check was ready, and he drove in to the office for it.
The check read: "Pay to the order of R.A. West: One Cent"!
What a final reward after thirty years of service.
But there is a paymaster whose pay is far, far worse. Serve the devil for thirty years—sixty years—a whole lifetime—and what will your final paycheck be? DEATH!
No other reward will be given, though the "pleasures of sin for a season" may keep the end "out of sight, out of mind."
On the other hand, what does God offer?
Not wages, not something to be earned: "the GIFT of God is eternal life." The longest life is too short to earn it; the greatest effort can never deserve it, but God gives it—freely, "without money and without price"—through Jesus Christ our Lord.
If we do not deserve it and can never earn it, how do we get that gift?
We just accept it. We believe what God has said, we accept what Christ has done when He died on the cross, and we can put ourselves in that great "whosoever" "whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God." Eph. 2:3.