No Free Lunch?

No Free Lunch?

Isaiah 55

            “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”  We’re all familiar with the saying.  You don’t get something for nothing.  There’s always a payment that comes due for everything we (seemingly) get for free.

            Many years ago taverns put out food at lunchtime to attract customers.  Patrons would come in, eat the food provided, and congratulate themselves on getting lunch free.  What they failed to realize was that the drinks they consumed cost them more than a meal at home or in a restaurant would have.  They paid for that lunch in the cost of their liquid refreshment.  Tavern owners knew that providing food items increased their profits.  Why else would they have done it?  They certainly weren’t being generous.  They were in business to make money, not to feed the neighborhood.

            Is this where the saying came from?  I don’t know; but it’s possible.  Someone, somewhere woke up to the “cost” of the meal, and came to the profound conclusion:  “We’re not getting our food for free!  We’re actually paying more for it than we should.  There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

            That’s what makes us suspicious when we read the opening verses of Isaiah 55.  We know there’s no free food, let alone free drink.  How can Isaiah’s words be true?  Can God really be providing a free lunch?  But listen to what Isaiah is saying:

            “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and the one who has no money, come buy and eat!  Come buy wine and milk without money and without price.”

            Can this be true?  Does God really mean it?  Can we really get a free lunch?

            We know the answer to these questions, of course.  It’s true!  God does indeed provide a free lunch.  God offers us food and drink—spiritual food and drink without money and without price.  It’s called grace, and we all have been recipients of this gift.

            We know there is nothing we have done or can do to make us worthy of God’s grace.  We know we don’t deserve any of the blessings God bestows on us.  But we also know that those blessings come pouring down from heaven in a never-ending stream.  Certainly we have had our share of wine, milk, and honey from God’s great storehouse—and it hasn’t cost us a thing.

            Someone much smarter than me came up with a good definition:  “Grace is what God gives us when we don’t deserve it, and mercy is when God doesn’t give us what we do deserve.” 

If we ever wanted an explanation of God’s relationship with humankind in one sentence, this is it.  We certainly don’t deserve mercy.  Not only—as Paul tells us in Romans—have we all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, we continue to sin, and continue to fall short of the mark God has set for us.  By any terms imaginable we don’t deserve either grace or mercy; yet there they are, waiting for us to claim them.

How can God forgive us so readily?  How can God continue to provide us with grace and mercy in spite of our continued shortcomings?  Listen again to God’s voice speaking through Isaiah’s pen.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

It may be the only free lunch we ever get, but it’s the only one that matters.