In my life, they all share one thing: at some point they were precious treasures to me and I found great delight in collecting them. (Somewhat to my current chagrin!)
As a tiny girl, I collected tissue boxes by the dozens under my bed (they were so pretty, didn't cost me anything, and eventually I used them to make a nice house!). I also kept a sticker album for years where I would collect the stickers off of fruit and vegetables. It was of utmost fascination to me to find a new kind of sticker on a banana, apple or avocado and carefully peel it off to store in my exotic little book. I loved counting up how many different countries were represented in the album, and delighting in the interesting colors and pictures featured. Later on in life, I collected stamps for a while. It was so exciting to get mail, and if it was from another country what a bonus! I would store the stamps away like rare treasure. (Because, after all, they were!) When I look back at my life so far I can see a theme hobby of mine: finding treasures in what other people saw as commonplace or even worthless.
Eventually I got rid of pretty much all of my collections. As I grew up, I started desiring to have as few things as possible (call me a minimalist if that makes you happy). I grew a desire to not accumulate too many things, with the prospective future of moving around a lot and living overseas. However, to say I don't collect treasures anymore would be somewhat false. I can’t stop being a treasure-hunter; however, my collections tend to feature ideas that fascinate me, quotes that stir me up, lists of ways I see God in my life, and...pebbles. Ever since I did a few projects where I created pictures using little pebbles, I can no longer walk past an area filled with little rocks without seeing all their creative potential. I must confess that I have several small pebble stashes here and there for future projects.
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| I drew faces on 30 or so bottle caps to make a new set of toys for Joy |
Trash Pile:
| an angry man ruining a nice picnic our refugee staff invited us to | no place to hang our portable hammock so I had to put Joy to sleep and spend her nap time with her in the hot van | I got sick with a miserable head cold | Joy got sick with a miserable head cold too | we were "forced" to move into a new apartment when we actually were enjoying the place we had been living in, and weren't wanting to move | the restaurant we decided to join teammates at was terribly expensive, and we spent far more for our meal than we would've if I had made it at home, plus it wasn't all that amazing, and we had to wait until around 8:30pm for it. | a bumbling experience of trying to share Good News with somebody. |
Treasure Pile:
...If we hadn’t been chased away from “our” mountainside grilling site by an angry man, we wouldn’t have been able to come to the sea and enjoy the ocean breeze and splashing in the water. ...If there had been a place by the sea to hang our portable hammock, I wouldn’t have had an excuse for some alone time away from the hubbub of constant cross-cultural ministry that hot Saturday. I wouldn't have slowed down enough to notice the mounds of wild-blueberry-type-bushes giggling all around me as some sort of creatures filled them with ticking chirps.
...If I hadn’t gotten sick with a miserable head cold I wouldn’t have been pressed to ask the Lord if there’s anything He’s trying to say. If I hadn’t asked? He wouldn’t have been able (as easily at least) to show me some ugly pride and get it out of the way. If Joy hadn’t gotten sick, I wouldn’t have been able as easily to take time off from Oasis work to stay at home and settle in after moving to a new apartment. I wouldn’t have had the time to find places for everything and make the new apartment feel like home within the first week here. If the apartment didn’t really feel like home for several weeks, that would doubtless have affected the rest of our time here.
...If we hadn’t been “forced” to move into a different apartment halfway through our stay here, we wouldn’t have gotten to have a balcony that overlooks the beauty of the rippling sea. We wouldn't have gotten a chance to live beside a seaside restaurant and where octopus legs hang in the sun to dry outside our window.
...If we hadn't decided to go to the restaurant with the team here, we would have missed the moments of hilarity as we enjoyed the reaction of one of the guys when he realized he had mistakenly ordered raw fish. (In case you're wondering, the merriment continued as he did in fact eat it, defying the rude suggestions that it was still squirming and not yet completely deceased. I tried some too, and it was good.)
...If I wouldn't try to share the Good News, I would never get better at it. And the person I shared with when I verbally stumbled around so much actually continued to be interested and went home with living Bread in her bag!
In parting, may we all have the faith today to believe that there are treasures hiding in the circumstances of our lives, no matter how ordinary or how trashy they may seem.
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