Waste or For Recycling?

Did you know that there is an island of trash swimming around the Pacific Ocean? Yesterday I was reading about it. It made me ponder about the amounts of “trash” swimming inside of us without any restraint. Moreover, as I was reading the article, I found myself thinking: “this rubbish should be picked up and recycled.” Then I thought of so many moments and things in my own life that I do not recycle. I mean, all that useless resentments, old hurts, old habits, etc.

Hence, the title of this blog, are those things a waste or just in need of recycling? Can they be recycled? Do we have the means to transform a bad experience into something new?

According to God we do. Everything is an opportunity. Nothing is a waste in our lives. Good things give us immediate joy, peace, happiness, strength, and so on. Bad times teach us lots about the world, ourselves and strengths we didn’t know we had. Failures can make us more understanding with other people’s struggles, more merciful, able to forgive other’s failures…

So I found myself musing on how to do this recycling. My answer came from the Word of God; in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells the disciples about the problems they will face; he says… “You will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, as evidence to them and to the gentiles (Matthew 10,18)” As ordinary people, the only way to speak to governors and kings about Christ was to be the prisoner in a trial. Looking back in my life I realized that much of that “trash” made me able to do things that otherwise I would never have been able to do. Thanks to God we have the capacity to recycle trash into a new life.