'One man's rubbish'

With our impending move to Leicester drawing ever closer, the pressure to get everything sorted out in preparation is growing.  We seem to have been packing boxes for months, but there still appears to be a lot of unpacked items to deal with.  We also have to complete the process of sorting through our furniture to decide which bits will fit into the new house and which will have to be disposed of.

A couple of days ago I decided to have a go at clearing out the garage.  It's probably been some years since the garage had a good clear-out, and I wasn't particularly looking forward to the task.  I decided that the best method of approach was to take just about everything out of the garage, and then go through it systematically.  It was a rather dirty job, although it was worth the effort in the end: the garage is now looking considerably cleaner and tidier. 

A few items were put aside for the charity shop; some others we decided to keep, but quite a lot of what we discovered in the garage was put on a pile to go to the tip.  It was no longer of any practical use or value to us. 

Just as we had almost finished the job, a van came round the corner and pulled up opposite our gates.  The two occupants were on the lookout for waste metal, and they had seen that we had a few items which might add to their collection!  They eagerly took what we offered them.  I suppose I could have asked them whether they were prepared to pay for what they took, but as I was intending taking it to the tip anyway, I didn't bother.  I was happy that they had saved me the trouble of taking the items to the tip, and they were happy to have received the items.  One of the men in the van even came back to say thank-you!

That little incident proved the old saying, "one man's rubbish is another man's treasure."  What we were discarding as worthless, the two men in the van saw as something of worth.  I thought of the gospel story which I had spoken about in church last Sunday: the story of Jesus calling Matthew, the tax-collector, to become his disciple; and the stir which was caused amongst the religious leaders when Jesus then went to shared a mean with Matthew and his friends (see Matthew 9:9-12).

To the religious leaders, Matthew, his tax collector friends, and the other so-called "sinners" who were sharing a meal with Jesus, were rubbish, of no value.  Yet to Jesus they were precious; indeed, they were the very sort of people for whom Jesus came.  He came to show that EVERY human life is precious in God's sight; there are no "rubbish" people in the eyes of God.