Trash

One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.  Discarded cars, in the right hands, can become works of art.  Trash, remains, and garbage from one perspective are all elements in future opportunities.  Recycled plastic comes back to life as children’s toys, lumber alternatives, and even bricks.  Everywhere you look there are new creations from yesterday’s refuse.  Imagination rules!  Boundaries are banished!  Limitations are obsolete!
 
In the midst of the regeneration there are always the nay-says.  These are the people who “know” trash is trash and garbage should be tossed.  “Get real” is their advice.  “Accept life’s reality” is their motto.  “See life for what it is” is their daily mantra.  In these cases hope seems to be on vacation.  Life’s blues appears to be in permanent residence.  Yet even in this, there is a longing for what might be.  You can sense the thirst, longing, and even uncertainty.  Maybe, just maybe, there is an opportunity.
 
The combination of a pessimistic outlook and seeing things as junk can be personally devastating!  You and I know there is trash in our lives.  You and I understand mistakes and errors are included in our complete history.  The details haunt your dreams and mine.  There are no illusions in the darkness of the night.
 
The outcome is an unvoiced thread we hold in our hearts.  I know I am full of junk therefore I am part of the trash.  I know my history is full of things less than perfect therefore I am part of life’s garbage.  Junk and trashed is to be discarded.  My life holds little value.
 
God sees things very differently.  When God looks at you and I the only vision is full of what we can be.  The fact is that “everyone left behind in Zion, all the discards and rejects in Jerusalem, will be reclassified as “holy”—alive and therefore precious.  God will give Zion's women a good bath.  He'll scrub the bloodstained city of its violence and brutality, purge the place with a firestorm of judgment.” (Isaiah 4.3, 4)  Everything is possible, even with trash.