Recycle Me

Today I drove eight hours round trip to visit my grandfather. Most of you know how major an impact he has had on my life. He is my earliest role model.

My grandfather for most of his life has been unchurched... but he IS a church. He lives the message that Jesus taught, to love others and help those in need. He has made his life a living act of praise for his Creator.

I love my grandfather. It was his influence that made a young boy dream of creating. It was his love that nurtured me and shaped me.

There were many things we would do together. By the time I got to know grandpa, he was no longer a progressive Iowa farmer, the first in the area to employ radical things a tractor. He was long since retired to a small little house in Bloomfield, Iowa were he gardened and took care of my grandmother.

My mother used my grandfather was free daycare when she’d have errands to do in town. These hours of quality time are some of the most important moments of my life.

We would read books. I remember Part Time Dog most of all. We would walk Waldo his black, hyperactive poodle. We would work outside running errands. And on special days, very special days, we would open the basement door and go down the steep stair to his workshop. I remember the shattered tools about the workbench, the piles of wood and things, and the smell of sawdust.

Down those steep stairs we he made devotional sculpture out of driftwood, recycled barn wood and other bits and scraps. I would be his helper. One of my favorite things I can remember doing was going about on garbage day and looking for useful things to make into sculptures. There was something amazing to me about this, even at a young age. These items were lost.. Thrown away… but then they were found and would be transformed… new life. Regeneration if you will. I new that there was something almost sublime about this process, but the implications I didn’t realize for years.

My grandfather has lived 100 years. He has seen many changes. And as he finishes his last time on this earth he is focused on finishing his artwork. He says he doesn’t do it to make sculpture. In fact he baulks at this term. He says he does it because he is compelled to pull the image that God has already formed inside the wood.

We are only guaranteed one thing in this life and its not longevity. We aren’t promised ten days let alone the one hundred years that my grandfather has lived. We aren’t promised good health or happiness or to be treated fairly. Only one said thing is universal. Sin will wreck our life. It will happen in one way or another... it is a fact. Is this fair? Not really. But it’s a byproduct of the fall. We live in this world where sin wrecks us and separates us from God. We end up just like the items my grandfather collected. We are broken, we are discarded and we are waiting on the curbside for the trash man to come where will be lost for eternity.

But that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. You see, the Savior is walking about, friends. He’s looking for those items, diamonds in the rough. He wants to pick them up and turn them recycle them, to save them from destruction and give them a new, everlasting life.

Don’t just be trash… let the Savior work in you. Be transformed into a beautiful work of art for the Lord. Be turned from trash to treasure. Embrace the Living Lord and become so much more.