God loves trash

My name is Trisha and sometimes people call me Trish for short. And very often friends address me as Trish in sms-es. The iPhone, however, has an auto-correct function that by default auto-corrects Trish to Trash. And on numerous occasions, I’ve been addressed as Trash in my sms-es. Usually these are followed by apologies and how they didn’t mean to but it was the phone’s fault etc…

To be honest I am not at all offended at being called Trash. Not that these were intentional, but the very first time I received such a message, I heard God tell me that He loved trash.

I was immediately reminded of the call of Matthew in Matt 9:9-12. He was not a good man… a tax collector and one who fellowshipped with sinners. The Pharisees didn’t think tax collectors and sinners were people worthy to even have a meal with… in essence, trash. Yet Jesus hand-picked Matthew to be one of his 12 disciples. The thing is… Jesus didn’t choose Matthew for what he was at that time, but what He saw Matthew could become. The Pharisees saw trash but He saw potential. Of course we know that Matthew answered the call and stuck with Jesus. He was there at the big events like the feeding of the 5,000. He was sent out to heal the sick and performed miracles like the rest of the disciples. After Jesus ascended, He was there in the upper room on the day of Pentecost. He was there witnessing God’s plan of salvation first-hand and even wrote the Gospel which now opens the New Testament. How’s that for potential! Who would have thought this tax collector or trash would do all that? Only God knew… only God saw.

Apart from God, all of us are, to put it bluntly, trash… sinners, rebellious and unrighteous. But God, even before we were born, already had a plan to save us through His Son Jesus Christ. In His omniscience, He looks beyond and sees only the potential of what we can become, even when we don’t see it ourselves.

Since I gave my life to the Lord, I became a new creation in Christ; the old has passed and all things have become new (2 Cor 5:17). But I appreciate every sms addressing me as trash, because it is a gentle reminder that God loves me and sees potential in me.