The Real Meal Deal!

“Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver and gold… but by the precious blood of Christ.”  (I Peter 1:18-19 NKJV)

Back in 1980 when I had begun my eventual twenty year employment with Hewlett Packard and their spin off Agilent Technologies, I was hired into the prototype Printed Circuit Board Shop in the Santa Rosa Division. It was my photography background that actually landed the job for me.  I worked part time in the darkroom producing the negatives for the various designs and the other half using the negatives as the pattern to silk screen the designs onto the boards themselves.  Our shop was connected to the R&D lab of the Test and Measurement side of Hewlett Packard (the other part of the business being the computer company) and we built test and early production boards for a group of engineers and designers.  The finished products from our shop went directly to the production lines where they were loaded with the various electronic components and then installed into the instruments for either further tests or first run production.

I can remember a time when there were some failures in the field that were traced back to our shop.  At the time Hewlett Packard was a major supplier of signal frequency test instruments that where used by the military, electronics companies and the up and coming cell phone industry.  When some of our 45 thousand dollar instruments failed, believe me, it was considered a BIG deal!  There was a lot of attention given to the problem, but the solution was hard in coming.  Finally we brought in a new young engineer who looked at all the evidence that had been compiled and discovered the source of the problem.  It seemed that there were tiny particulates growing under the plated circuits that only occurred in the damper climates of the world. 

At this point I don’t remember if the problem was fixed by the changing of a contaminated rinse during the plated process, or if they were inhibited with the addition of a cleansing rinse after the final gold plate.  Either way, with the clean rinse, the problem was resolved and we were able to replace the contaminated boards and assure that it would not happen again in our new products coming out of production.

That memory was stirred up in me today as I read from I Peter 1:18-19 where it states that we have been born again by the precious blood of Jesus that He shed for us.  In verse 23 Peter says that it is incorruptible.  The word incorruptible means that it cannot decay, corrode or be changed from a sound state.  In the printed circuit board process they use a thin layer of gold as the final coating on the circuits that are placed on the boards.  This metal is used because it does not corrode or decay very easily and gives the best assurance that the frequency flowing across it will be true and unbroken.  But, as you saw from my example, if it is not cleansed properly, the signal can be corrupted.

Our salvation is more assured than that of any process known to man!  It is an incorruptible seed that will stand any pressure or condition that is set against it!  If we stand firm in our conviction and faith in it, we will always receive a true and constant signal from our heavenly Father!  And while it cost Him a price infinity higher than the mere 45K that some of HP’s instruments cost at the time, this salvation cost us nothing except the yielding of our lives to Him!  Wow!  What a deal!  Kinda like that KFC ad where they talked about “A real meal deal!”  God’s salvation by the precious blood of Jesus is the ticket to a luscious meal that is ours for eternity!

With that in mind… Why not go out today and invite somebody over for dinner?  It could be just the luscious meal they need to turn their contaminated lives around!  Have a great day.  Stay in tune to His Word and keep asking yourself… “What am I expecting today?"