Words Of Encouragement To Start The Day (Tuesday 05/25/10)

One Man’s Trash Is God’s Treasure…

1 Corinthians 1:27-29 (Amplified Bible)

²⁷[No] for God selected (deliberately chose) what in the world is foolish to put the wise to shame, and what the world calls weak to put the strong to shame. ²⁸And God also selected (deliberately chose) what in the world is lowborn and insignificant and branded and treated with contempt, even the things that are nothing, that He might depose and bring to nothing the things that are, ²⁹So that no mortal man should [have pretense for glorying and] boast in the presence of God.

I remember when we were stationed in Japan and in Hawaii; we lived on an Air Force Base. There was a custom or tradition that was held in high esteem in each one of these places. The night before the trash was due to be picked up; husbands, wives, and children alike would go for walks around the neighborhood. No it was not for exercise, but it was to see the things that people were throwing away, and to see if any of it was in good repair or suited a need in their particular home. At first I thought, wow that is ghetto...but then one day as I watched, I noticed that what had become an item of no use or value to one family was very valuable and useful to another family. Often just like we are.

Facebook is an interesting site; you get to reconnect with people from your past. When my children and siblings first started to utilize this site, I would not. I wasn’t comfortable. But they finally convinced me to try it, so I did. One of my first encounters with an old high school friend was strange, because they began to pour out their heart and tell me how they had ignored me, then, but wished they hadn’t. That they did not appreciate the person I was then, but now they could see my value. Whew, it was mind blowing and numbing all in one sweep. Someone that had cast me away in my younger years now, saw something that they saw others treasured and valued and knew that their assessment then was wrong. How often are we cast aside, despised, looked down upon, or not accepted by people and we thought or felt that it was the end of the world or at least close to it and then God sends us someone that is able to be friend and except us warts and all. They are able to find value in who God has created us to be in spite of what another might have said or done, thought or the way they treated us.

We need to be careful how we assess people and what they bring to the table based upon “our” expectations. But God does not see or view that individual as we do. What may not look good, smell good, or live in the right neighborhood or have the right clothes or education, may be God’s anointed. That individual may be assigned to bless our lives and bring us deliverance, or favor our lives in a way that it has never been favored before. It is those people, those individuals that usually seem the most insignificant, that God will utilize in the largest way. It is that woman with a broken heart and broken spirit, that man that has served time and maybe hardened to the world, that child that didn’t come from the right side of the tracks, that family that lives 10 deep in one house. You see none of those things matters to God. Yes, He sees all of these things and He cares about them but those things do not disqualify or qualify an individual from being God’s chosen, God’s ordained and used by God for the up-building of His kingdom. So before we take another pot shot, before we think another negative thought, before we disqualify people from our lives, remember we never know who it is that we are choosing to pass judgment on and place our stamp of unworthiness upon. They just might be exactly what God wants, and who He is choosing over, even “us.”