"ONE MAN'S TRASH..."

“He also that is slothful in his work is brother to him that is a great waster.” (Proverbs 18:9)

I think you all know the line, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” I’m USUALLY not one for picking through trash. In fact, I’m usually what could be called a “thrower-outer”. My parents through almost nothing away. I guess that was common for “children of the Great Depression”. The problem was the YEARS it took to sort through their “stuff” after they died! I grew up with clutter and “stuff” EVERYPLACE. I loved my parents, but I hated the clutter. It’s made me a “thrower-outer”. My kids laugh because I’ll be walking their dishes, cups, and glasses into the sink (from they living room) and they’ll say, “Hey, I’m not done with that, yet!” With me, if a dish sits unused and unattended to for over twenty minutes, it’s into the dishwasher! With the exception of National Geographics, I don’t tend to save magazines, and EVEN National Geographics have their limits. I discarded my 1988 and 1989 copies this week. I figured having all the “Geographics” back to 1990 was good enough. So, for ME to talk about and encourage taking somebody’s trash and making something useful from it is, well, sort of a MIRACLE!

I don’t want to bore you with a really long story, but our church leased a new photocopier a few months ago. The new copier is larger and more “high tech” than any photocopier we’ve previously used. For the twenty-two years that I have been at First Assembly of God of Framingham, we’ve put all of our photocopiers on a metal stand that’s about two and a half feet high, by two and a half feet wide, and two and a half feet long. The stand is gray, and enclosed. A large door in the front gives access to the inside where we kept paper, transparencies, and other copier “goodies”.

Our new copier does not need a stand- the stand, and the paper shelves and the paper drawers, and the machine are all ONE UNIT. In a way that’s a good thing and in a way that’s a bad thing. It was a bad thing because we had to move the gray metal stand out of our front office. It was in a little room down the corridor. I know most of you are not familiar with our church building. It was not originally a church building. It was originally a Union meeting hall downstairs and the Union’s offices and credit union upstairs. The key words and phrases for the upstairs are “small” and “no room”. Some of our leaders wanted to get rid of the gray stand. Granted, there was no room for it, but I was arguing, “What about all the stuff that’s in it? Where will that go?” It was argued that it could go in a closet (that’s already pretty full and hasn’t got much room to work with). It was a dilemma. And, then, even if I found a place for the “stuff” in the old copier stand, what would I DO with the old copier stand?

“Lord, I don’t have any solution to this problem,” I privately prayed, “But if there’s a solution, I pray you’d show me what it is!”

I love to take long walks, and this past Sunday afternoon, I did exactly that. At Webster and Concord Sts. (that’s the sort of “funny” intersection where Webster actually ends JUST before it would actually connect with Concord, for you “Framingham-ites”) someone had placed a small, wooden stand/shelving unit on the sidewalk with a “FREE” sign. I don’t know if it was originally a T.V. stand or a stereo stand (maybe for a 1970s type system) or what. It WAS kind of an odd piece of furniture, BUT it looked to be around 25% smaller than the old copier stand. (The problem with the old copier stand is that it was just TOO big to fit in the church’s front office next to the new copier. People would have been climbing and tripping over it. It would have looked ridiculous.) But THIS wooden thing...25% smaller...I thought “It just might WORK in there”.

I wished I was NOT on foot. The thing WAS on wheels. Yes, I could have wheeled it the eight/tenths of a mile home, but I would have looked ridiculous, and I probably would have hurt my back bending over and rolling it for twenty minutes. I came back to the spot in my ‘89 Volkswagen Golf on Monday morning. I did not see the stand. I sadly thought, “Somebody must have taken it.” Suddenly, I spotted it! The family had put it back in their yard, but it still had the “FREE” sign taped to it. Thank God the VW’s rear seat folds down, because I had to fold it down and do some convoluted maneuvers to get the wooden stand into the car, but I did it. It felt great to get it to the church building and get it inside. I cleaned it all up with Pledge. I rolled it into the front office. It fit PERFECTLY beside the new copier and looks great there!

Now, for the second challenge. I had to empty out the old metal stand and move the stuff to the new stand. SOME of it, I put in a closet. Just about anybody who would look at that metal copier stand with weird, awkward dimensions (circa 1970) would have thought what I was thinking, “WHO would ever want this?!”

By faith, I taped two large “FREE” signs to it and with some difficulty, carried it out to the sidewalk in front of the church building. I was not out there twenty seconds, when a middle-aged Hispanic man driving an SUV stopped. He was very excited. He smiled, pointed to the stand, and announced, “I want that!” It seems a friend of his was looking for something to use for a T.V. stand. They had gone to several stores over the weekend, and couldn’t find anything. The guy told me this was actually perfect! So he took it away!

Yes, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” and once again, God shows me His faithfulness!