Recycle Bin

Our local grocery store does not bag your items.  You may use boxes found throughout the store to transport groceries home or reusable bags.  We bring reusable bags with each visit.  Yesterday, my son found a box next to us while bagging our purchases.  You would have thought he found a million dollars.  He took my pen and wrote his name on every side so no one else could claim it. 

When we arrived home, he took it quickly to our playroom and began using it.  He created a garage for a portion of his car collection.  Later in play, he used the box as a shield from the "rain" coming down on our racetrack.  His little mind always churns to invent fun out of simple material.  Paper towel rolls become horns, flutes, telescopes or tunnels for his cars.  Boxes, depending on size, have been his home, nail boards, cars, a storage garage or just an empty canvas to draw.

He never counts any material as 'JUNK'!

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" (2 Corinthians 5:17)

"But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him." (Jeremiah 18:4)

"Yet you, LORD, are our Father.
   We are the clay, you are the potter;
   we are all the work of your hand." (Isaiah 64:8)

Just as my son finds use in anything he sees, so God finds use in each of His Children.  Whether you feel like an old box, broken pot or 'junk'; God does not see you as such.  He finds each of us as a treasure waiting for us to allow Him to work in us.  He takes our broken, sinful lives and creates beauty.  He writes His name all over His work for to see through Him a new creation appeared.  We leave who we were and become who He planned for us to be.

A potter takes a marred piece of clay and creates a very useful pot, formed to what seemed best in his eye.  God is our potter, we are His clay.  He forms each of us to best suit Him.  He never counts any of us as lost, useless or 'junk'.

God finds treasure in what the world sees as worthless, old or trash.  My son loves to raid my recycle bin to create a new use for the material.  God raids through His Children to bring them out of the recycle bin and use them for even a better more creative purpose.  It is then when He shines forth because we are used for something less obvious to the human eye.  He uses us for tasks beyond our imagination.  We are His!

God, thank you for today.  Thank You for the many lessons taught through my son.  Keep him working for You.  Though he is too little to understand the work You do through him each day, I see it.  Thank You!  Take me from the recycle bin and use me for Your great works.  I am here to be molded and shaped to transform my marred past to a useful present and future.  I love You.

Keep praying harder than the devil can work.

Sheree Craig