I walk into the drafty, smelly, concrete room dragging my black plastic bag full of bottles and cans. I hear echoes of the laughter at the birthday party where my daughter’s guests and our family consumed the liquid in these brown bottles and happily colored cans as I open the bag to begin sorting. Glass here, aluminum there. The mix of smells is sickening. What was sweet and good and satisfying to begin with has become stale and sticky sweet. I take a deep breath, glad for the cold sharp air of the outside room and I begin to redeem my old, used bottles and cans for something of value.
Once I have become accustomed to the smell, I must contend with the noise. The bottles land with a deep “thonk” and I wait for the unsettling burst of glass breaking in the machine. Thankfully the pieces don’t fly out at me; they are contained within the crash site and their pieces mingle with other broken pieces. The containers are unrecognizable.
The cans crumple and shrink under the pressure of the big machine. They lose their shape and ability to hold anything. They become small and useless. Squashed flat.
I take a deep breath. The smell is getting to me. The noise is unbearable until I can tune it out with my thoughts. Still feeding the containers in one by one, I think of redemption. Five cents per bottle. Five cents per can. Not much, but it adds up.
When I come before you in the quiet of my praying and my journaling, God, I begin to look around for the empties. Thoughts gather and I place them in the bag of my journal. I hear the laughter in my memories, I feel again the hot, salty tears on my face when I think of the agony of holding unanswered questions.
How do you look at my life, God? How do you see my sin? What of repentance–the act of agreeing with you that something needs to be done and You are the one to do it? If I repent every time I breathe, will that take care of every broken shard in me that needs Your grace? Oh, and one more question: grace–just how much can I depend on Your grace without taking advantage of it? Of you?
The noise of the questions grows unbearable and I find that I have stopped breathing for a moment in the clamoring, crashing brokenness. The smell of old doubts and the sticky, familiar stale sweet feeling of fear takes the upper hand in my awareness.
The large bag is limp now. The machines have consumed all the bottles, all the cans. I see a place to wash my hands and dry them with a paper towel. I hold the paper receipt describing the details of redemption between my teeth, away from the soap and water that will wash away the truth of what I have earned for my empties.
I have brought my questions, my emptiness, my doubt, my fear to a place of redemption. My hands are sticky and smelly with touching these very human parts of me. I cannot quite get the smell to go away. But I have surrendered them to a power that is able to refashion them into something new, with a new purpose. Redeemed. Bought back for a price, for a reason. Because Someone wants to use me.
I have not been unaware that there are others around me experiencing the same thing. Each one with his or her bag of empties, standing in front of other machines, experiencing a similar sensation of breaking, reforming, washing, redeeming. It’s like a community of faith, a church, this drafty, concrete outside room. We all come knowing we need, and want, redemption.
The chilly night air feels good as I walk toward my car. I have some crisp bills tucked away in my wallet–the fruit of the exchange of my printed evidence of redemption. I am richer. In more ways than money can bring. I am at peace with the questions. I have agreed with God that I need Him. I am balanced in His grace. I am–redeemed.
So spacious is He, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe–people and things, animals and atoms–get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood on the cross. You yourselves are a case study of what he does.
Colossians 1:18-19, The Message
Come. Rest. Ask. Grow. Walk. 