I live I a small community that still provides a service to help citizens clean up their yards and rid their garages, attics and corners of accumulated treasures that once were. Two days out of each month leading up to summer people are invited to drag items to the curb to be picked up for disposal by trash trucks – if they are not first picked up by treasure hunters pulling trailers or driving pickup trucks. This is not an unusual sight to see slow moving vehicles sort of trolling for treasure through the streets. Moments after a trash item is disposed of at the curb, a treasure hunter spies it and quickly salvages it.
Maybe you’ve had a similar experience. How often we hear “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” I’m sure the birth of resale shops had its root in that trash to treasure correlation. I’ve been creating an online course for writing a personal mission statement. Using resources supplied by the organization has indoctrinated me with words that force me to think about the values important to me and values woven into the fiber of my purpose. That all sounds so philosophical and deep, doesn’t it? But think about it for a minute. Think about it in relation to treasures or trash. If someone asked you right now what you want most in life, my guess is that you wouldn’t say, “I just want to be left alone and be ignored like trash.” Um no. That’s not likely. Wouldn’t you, even with minimal contemplation, say something like, “I want to make a difference.”?
As superficial as that sounds, making a difference isn’t a vague statement; it’s genuine. Regardless of choices that have gotten us to where we are now, there are times when we have said, I want to know that my life 
mattered. I struggle with ‘my purpose’. I have pleading conversations with God to ‘change me’ so I no longer doubt that I am living out ‘His purpose’. Does this ever happen to you? Do you ever feel like you’re living like tossed out trash instead of precious treasure? The creator of treasure refutes that in Isaiah 43:1 The Lord who created you, he who formed you says: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.” That sounds pretty impressive to me. God has said ‘You are mine’.
Christmas 1962 I received my most memorable gift of all – a baby doll. I loved her to well used, then my sister loved her to bald and threadbare. When reclaimed for my own daughter, I had a new body sewn because there was nothing left but strands. My granddaughter was looking at my baby doll that you see in this photo and pointed out the broken fingers, dirty skin, and blemished eyes. Do you think I agreed that my baby doll, once treasure had been demoted to trash? No, not even in the most subtle way. Instead I talked about how with my whole heart I wanted a baby doll for Christmas and no matter what she had become, I still loved her; she is still my treasure.
This is how God looks at us too. When we look at ourselves through our own distorted view of life, when we feel the cracks in our armor, when the reflection in our rearview mirror is not what we hoped to see – don’t we want someone to come along and scrape us away from the curb and call us not trash, but treasure?
When the enemy of my soul comes creeping along the curb threatening to toss me around like trash, I remind him that I am a treasure. “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” Through the lens of human assessment, I am ‘damaged goods’ ‘not salvageable’ ‘broken’ but God says “You are mine.” Then he unmistakably affirms in Jeremiah 31:3 “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”
God’s love is everlasting and He goes to great effort to show us how important His treasures are to him. Isaiah 45:2-3 “I will go before you and will level the mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord who summons you by name.”
Are you living curbside? What do you believe about you? God’s treasure? Or Satan’s trash? Pay attention to Psalm 86:11 “Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may joyfully worship you.” Psalm 139:14 “Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.”
