Happy Monday. I am a “work in progress.”

So is each and every one of us. The only alternatives are stagnation or death.

I was thinking along this line last week on garbage day.

Every Thursday morning, in my neighborhood, we place our trash on the curb. A little later, it’s picked up and taken to the dump, no further use for it.

However, there are blue bags put out on the same day, and they are picked up at a different time.

These are the recyclables and they are destined for various places, sorted, and will be made over into something useful again.

We are encouraged to recycle to make less waste and have things that are still very usable from discarded things.

I’m glad God recycles!

In Jeremiah 18, Jeremiah tells of going to the potter’s house only to find a vessel that was marred, no good.

But good news! The potter made it again, a vessel that seemed good to him.

Isaiah 64:8 addresses God and says, “we are the clay, thou art our potter, and we are the work of thy hand.” And as the late Ethel Waters said, “God don’t make no junk.”

Maybe you have felt like junk or at least marred and useless.

Take heart! Our Potter wants to make us over. Talk about a “makeover”! Wow!

People may put us on the trash heap. But not our Father. Aren’t you glad?

I need this reminder often, perhaps you do as well.

Listen to these words from J. R. Miller:

“Christ is building his kingdom from earth’s broken things. Men want only the strong, the victorious, the unbroken–but God is the God of the unsuccessful, of those who have failed. Heaven is filling with earth’s broken things, lives that Christ can restore to glorious beauty.

He can take a life crushed by pain or sorrow and make it into a harp whose music shall be all praise.

He can lift earth’s saddest failure up to Heaven’s glory.”

All our Potter wants is for us to remember, we are just clay and He can do as He pleases.

And it will be good!