Get this. For $19 you can book a poolside room in a southern California luxury hotel. Theroom comes with . . . a floor, a bathroom with a single light bulb, no toilet paper, and no towels. There’s no jacuzzi. There’s no television. There’s no room service. There’s no bed, no linens, no maid service. You put up your tent in the room, haul out your own sleeping bag, and fall asleep to the sounds of the local wildlife falling into the deep end of the swimming pool.
Theycall it a new marketing trend for luxury resorts that are experiencing a severe slump in business. It sounds like a weekend in the Boundary Waters to me, only not as interesting. Occupancy rates in luxury hotels have dropped off nearly 10% according to one source. In an effort to attract customers some resorts are trimming their rates by using a “sliding scale of deprivation.” That means the customer pays less with “each amenity stripped from the room.”
Interestingly, this resort’s strategy seems to have worked. The assistant general manager said that the promotion drew more than 420 reservations, including 240 bookings at the $19 rate and 116 at the $39 rate (which includes a bed.)
Isn’t it something when, in order to get something nice, you have to scale it down so far it isn’t nice anymore?
When a person comes to God in faith, they get everything God is and everything God has to offer, no matter who they are, what they’ve done, what they’re social status is, or anything. A person never has to settle with “a little bit” of God in order to have any of God at all. There’s a verse in the Bible that records this thought from God, “…you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him, if you search for him with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deuteronomy 4:29, ESV).
God doesn’t say that those who seek him out will find a part of him, an aspect of him, a component of him, he says they will find him. All of him. All his power. All his mercy. All his justice. All his forgiveness. All his love. All his glory. When we seek him we find all he is.
We sometimes fail to maintain the distinction between what we can experience of God in any given moment, and who God is in that same moment. Human beings are limited. God is limitless. Human beings are finite. God is infinite. God does not stop being infinite just because he steps into our finite experience with love or correction or wisdom or help. God does not stop being love because he corrects us or just because he forgives us. God maintains the integrity of his person at all times and beyond time.
“What does all this mean?” you ask? It means that whatever need you bring to God he brings all the resources that are his as God to his response. It means that when we seek forgiveness for sin, we don’t ever have to worry about not receiving enough forgiveness. It means that God will never scale down the luxury of grace in order for everybody to have a bit. It means that God will never present himself to you as less than what he is.
That’s the Good News.
Pastor Dale McIntire has served as pastor of the Cornerstone Community Church in Grand Marais since April of 1995.
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