Devotion 394 - Upcycle

I stood and listened as the beautiful grey-haired lady described the bench.  It was exactly what we were looking for.  We had covered a thousand booths at the open air market looking for something our little girl could use as her desk.  This would be her big-girl room and there was something in me wanting it to be perfect.

It was.  The bench was white with a lovely hand painted design.  The grey-haired husband strolled over and said they needed to move it to make room in their little shop.  I saw the price; it was more than fair but then unprompted they marked it down more.  

Finally they whispered the words that sealed it for my husband.  They said, it started life as a piano bench and we “upcycled it.”  My husband looked at me and we whispered, “Sold!”

I grew up in a home where absolutely everything was recycled, well before recycling was fashion.  There were no recycling trucks, no bins, no green initiative. 

Recycling was done in my home by my parents, two depression era babies determined to repair, reuse and recycle.  I realized recycling bears a stunning similarity to upcycling, only upcycling seems to make something better out of something good or bad.  Recycling quite literally takes it apart.

I want to do more upcycling.

I want to create better.

 

I sat and drank my coffee invited into a conversation with women I barely knew.    They covered politics and I realized we did not agree, and then they moved on to child rearing, schooling and church.

It was a smorgasbord of opinions, so much so I suddenly felt full of my own thoughts and inadequacy and I digested quiet.

It seems we live in a world of abundant thoughts and even more abundant words.  From news media to social media we are molded by what other people think. Thoughts are quite literally dissected and directed.

I pulled slowly back from the conversation and listened.  As I felt somewhat overwhelmed by the passion of this group of women, I retreated from my intuitive thoughts and took a walk through some logical ones.  It was there I realized we can choose to tear apart, reject and respond or I can choose to listen and look for reasons to build.

One of the greatest blessings in ageing is learning to listen before speaking and learning to look into faces before turning to judgment.

For the most mysterious of reasons, God has chosen to make us all divinely, completely and extraordinarily unique. No one was raised exactly like someone else.  No one has learned the vast array of lessons, or read the exact same books, or felt the exact same pain, or been frightened by the exact same things.  No one cries at all the same movies or hears the same sounds in nature.  No one walks with the same set of passions and no one’s heart breaks for all the same reasons.

 

Why then, when we speak or we listen, do we expect the same answers or the same reasons or the same conclusions?

We come together broken, looking for healing but often causing more hurt.

We let our present bias run rampant to the point our cognitive bias has no time to catch up or rationalize why we think or say or react.  We simply react and relationships crumble and our minds get busy judging and justifying.

Can we take what is good, what is bad, what we don’t understand and what we struggle to comprehend and build relationships. Isn’t that what Jesus did?

I believe with all my heart He could not walk in the exact shoes as the woman at the well, nor could he condone the lusts of the tax collectors, yet he could talk with them, he could dine with them, he could build something better out of bad.

Can I?

It is so much easier to walk away.  It is so much far more convenient to callously reject.  It often feels better to remove the pieces of people in my thoughts and my actions.

Did Jesus?

He embraced.  He invited.  He took the whole and rebuilt.  Sometimes with words, more often with love and always covered with prayer.

I forget that   His busy, world saving schedule allowed vast amounts of prayer.  I look at a situation, a person, a sin, a sadness and consider it mine.  Mine to literally disassemble or disown or mine to embrace and rebuild.  NONE are true, they are all quite literally note mine, but wholly His.

 

When I put that lens on the broken, the worn out, the used up, the frustrating, the hard, a light quite literally shines out of it. The question is what do we do with that light?

The problem we thought we were supposed to fix, perhaps we are just to see into and watch the glory reflect off of.

It is in every way a question of focus.  Do we focus on our intuitive judgment, our sense of right, our grasp on wrong, or do we focus on what Christ can do in the situation through our prayers, through our love, through our willingness to let Him rebuild.

The ashes become beauty, only those same ashes get in our eyes and blind us.  Let’s want to see beyond the ashes, to pray until we see beauty. Let the desire grow to watch Him rebuild and up cycle, making absolute exquisite out of unlovely.

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion-to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. 

They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. 

They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.   

Isaiah 61:1-4