Check Out My Plastic Rolex!

Would you be impressed if a guy you know showed you his new Rolex he just bought for two thousand bucks? You would probably think it was quite a deal…if it were really a Rolex and you could tell the difference. But what if it was clearly not a Rolex though it did indeed say Rolex on the face? What if parts of it were plastic; an absurdly obvious indication the watch was a fake? Like me, you would probably think, “What a rip-off! What kind of a moron would pay two thousand bucks for what is so obviously a worthless imitation?”

Well, a guy I know did show me such a watch. He was a nine year old boy. He did not know the qualities that make a Rolex valuable. He had simply heard Rolex watches are classy and he was very impressed with the one on display so he decided to buy it. Poor little guy. I couldn’t bring myself to shatter his delusional perception of his prized new watch. You might then ask where a nine year old boy would even come up with such a large sum of money, which I did. He then told me he didn’t mean dollars. The tickets that come out of some of the games he plays at the play station are called bucks and he had accumulated two thousand of them to trade in for the watch. I then thought, “Phew! At least the money was not real either.”

However, a few days later, the boy returned to me in tears. When I asked him what was wrong, he told me he could not find his watch. He had taken it off earlier when he went outside to play football with his friends because he did not want to risk breaking it. When he later went to put it back on, it was not where he thought he had left it. I told him not to worry about it, that he could just go earn more tickets and get another one at the play station. He then coldly responded he had been collecting game bucks for the past two years so he could get the watch. Ouch! I felt terrible for my indifference and apologized to him.

I was later relieved to find out his mom had simply put the watch away when she found it lying on the kitchen counter so it would not get lost. He was elated to share the news with me and went about showing off his Rolex again to everyone he saw, now including the story of how he thought he lost it.

The following Sunday, I saw the boy again at church. A missionary who served a very poor community spoke about the needs of the people and the work of the gospel in helping them. The congregation had been asked to donate used items that could be sold in garage sale fashion in order to raise money for the mission. To conclude the service, the funds from the garage sale were proudly presented to the missionary along with a token offering from the church.

As everyone gathered around the missionary to wish him well, I saw the boy approach the man, take off his watch and hand it to him. Confused, the missionary asked, “What’s this?” The boy said, “I noticed you did not have a watch, so I’d like to give you mine.” The people around him were amused by the child’s offering but scoffed at the meagerness of his contribution, at least until the missionary responded to the gift. With reverence, the missionary put the watch on his wrist. He admired it for a moment as tears streamed down his face. He then warmly embraced the boy, telling him what a special gift it was and how he would cherish it always. After standing to his feet, he looked into the dumbfounded faces of those standing around him and said, “This boy has given me the most valuable gift I have ever received. He just gave me a Rolex.” I wept too as I understood the value of what the boy had just given though the watch was clearly worthless to everyone else. Like the boy, I guess the missionary didn’t know what made a Rolex special either…or perhaps he simply had an eye for what is really valuable… *

*This is a parable based on Scripture and real events