Do nasty things gross you out? Used rat traps, fly paper, dog vomit and the like? Things that make you go 'eeewwwww'? I hate those types of things. I'm kinda of a wimp when it comes to gross things. I get creeped out by them pretty easily. I don't know if its because I'm a germ-phobe or what, but I just do.
Yesterday, I was helping my mom out by doing a dump run of a bunch of stuff from her house. She had to get some plumbing re-done in her bathroom, so there was some leftover pipes that had been sitting around for a while that needed to be disposed of.
Now typically, when you go to the dump, you take everything you can, and send it to the landfill. But, for these pipes, I remembered that sometimes you can get some money for certain types of metals. I called the place and sure enough, the did take metals. When I got to my moms house, and looked at the pipe, one of them was the pipe that connects to the bottom of the toilet, with the wax ring still installed. Nice.
Gross city. Disgusting. To think what that wax ring had seen for the past few decades churned my stomach. It doesn't matter who, if you think about it long enough, a wax ring on a toilet is about as bad as you can get in my book.
With gloves on, I tossed that pipe, along with some others into the back of my truck to go to the recycle place. To myself, I thought that more than likely I wouldn't get much for the old pipe. It was gross. It was old. It was discarded. To me, worthless. Why anyone would want an old pipe that had been used like that is beyond me.
To my surprise, when we got there, the guy didn't even look closely at the pipe. He threw it on the scale and told me that he'd give me 16 dollars for all the pipe.
Wow. 16 bucks. Now, I realize that I didn't win the lottery yesterday, I got 16 dollars for an old toilet pipe. But here's the deal- something that I had deemed worthless, had value in the eyes of someone who knew what to look for. It didn't matter if I thought it had value. The guy who knew what to do with old things thought it had value and gave me 16 dollars for it.
Made me think- Isn't that what God does with us? He takes us, with all of our nastiness, all of our faults and accepts us. He looks past what we have done, where we have been, what we have been used for and says, "You have value". Sure, the world may not see us as valuable. People may see as a nasty person who used to do horrible things, but that's not how God views it.
When we turn away from those things that are nasty and turn towards the one who created us, we realize the inherent value that we have.
Think on that today. Turn away from your past. Turn towards the creator. Allow him to impart his spirit of value into you today. You're valuable. You're loved. You're accepted.
Be blessed
pastor matt
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