Salvage

Did you ever think about the close connection between the words salvation and salvage?

Salvation is a really clean word, sanitised and abstract. Sometimes Christians use it in a pious way to describe themselves. It gives a picture of smug sheep, branded with salvation and headed for heaven, looking down on the ones who are not so “chosen”. We hear a lot about “eternal salvation” as though it were something that only kicks in after we die. That makes salvation just a ticket to heaven, a reward for some kind of audition or test that we must have passed, which brings the focus back to us, and our brilliant performance that has earned us this prize. Something to be proud of.

Salvage is a brilliant way of thinking about salvation in these circumstances, because that’s all about rescuing something that is demonstrably broken and lost. You can salvage wreckage from the sea (perhaps with someone clinging to it), or old broken things from a junkyard. You can’t salvage anything that is doing OK on its own. Salvage is messy and individual and takes a lot of work, but only on the part of the one doing the rescuing. The person being saved only has to agree that they are in need of rescue, that they will not reach land on their own, that they need this. There’s nothing to boast about if you’ve been salvaged; you can only be grateful, not smug.

Thank God for His salvage. Thank God He picked me up, paddling hopelessly towards the horizon, and patched me back together with His beautiful grace, making me a new thing. I was rescued, once I finally had enough trust to accept rescue.

And thank God this is not an elite thing to boast about, but an offer for anyone who asks, who wants out of this average mess we live in. Do you want to be salvaged, made safe, beautiful and new? All you have to do is reach out to take hold of the outstretched hand of God, and say yes.

But I can’t see His hand, you might say.

It’s OK. You don’t have to.

He can see yours.

 

Ephesians 2: 8-9                          For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.

Galatians 3:28                              There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Matthew 11:28                            “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”