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Worth a Closer Look

Talk show host and car enthusiast, Jay Leno, heard about an older man in his neighbourhood who was rumored to have an old car in his backyard garage. After finding the man and visiting with him for a while, Leno asked if he could see the car. The man said, “No”. For over 20 years, Leno kept visiting the man and every time he asked to see what was in the garage the man said, “Oh, no, not today. Not today”.

Eventually, the man moved to a nursing home. Jay writes, “So I went to see his daughter. She was now in her 60s but she grew up in the house. I asked her when she was last in the garage. She said, ‘I guess when I was about 4 years old.’ That would have been around 1950. I asked her what was in there and she said, ‘Some old car’.”

He then offered to buy whatever was in the garage, sight unseen. She talked to her dad and he agreed, so they went to the garage, lifted the tarp and found a 1927 Model X Duesenberg Sedan.

What is so special about that? Well, there were only thirteen Model X sedans ever built and only four survive today.

One of the rarest cars in the world was sitting in the garage behind the house and for 60 years, this lady thought it was “just some old car”. Needless to say, she soon found out that what she thought was just junk was actually something incredibly valuable.

If I can draw a very unworthy parallel here, many people seem to think about Jesus in the same way that this woman thought about her dad’s old car. They have heard about him, but they do not see his value. Jesus was a nice guy, an interesting teacher or a good storyteller, but that is about it.

Luke 9, just for a second, Jesus let three of his followers see him, not as just a man, but as he truly was, the Son of God. “The appearance of his face changed and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning” (verse 29). That one glimpse of his glory changed Peter, James and John. More than thirty years later, they were still talking about the real Jesus they saw that day (2 Peter 1:16-18).

Have you really seen Jesus?

Sometimes a closer look can be very valuable.

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