Science

So i'm a scientist, and one of my duties on the job, is to check on chemicals, and if there is a problem discard the chemical. If I don't do this there will be problems later. We have a few different containers each with a different label, in which to put problem chemicals. One of these containers is simply marked unusable. I would say 90% of the chemicals that get thrown in unusable, have the same problem, and that is little flecks of dust floating in it. Which got me to thinking about.

Matt 7:1-5

¹"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. ²For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. ³"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? ⁴How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? ⁵You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

You know, how easy is it to find the faults in others? We find this one little thing, and the same thing or something more goes completely unnoticed in our own lives. Here is a small story for example.

A short while ago I went to a concert with some friends. Two of us rode separately and arrived a bit earlier than the rest, since we purchased the tickets as a group, we had to wait outside until the rest of our party got there. So we sat around and waited. While we waited two relativity attractive girls, asked us if we had tickets, and offered to sell us some extras they had. We politely declined sense we were waiting for ours, and we went back to people watching.

If you didn't know people watching at a concert is quite fun, you see people of all shapes and sizes. Kids with crazy hair, weird trendy outfits. Nerds, preps, whatever it was all there. One group that caught our attention was two or three guys, with long hair, crazy facial hair, ink, leather chains. The whole nine yards. You could tell from looking a these guys, that they rode Harlys, and that they all worked in a shop or a tattoo parlor, because nowhere else would hire them. It was great to see them at a Christian concert because these guys obviously needed it, these were the guys who could really use church in their life.

Then as we watched one of the men said in a loud, disruptive voice. "four free tickets, come on who wants a ticket, free ticket!" And i turned to my friend and said "I love that these are the guys, Christians tend to say are unusable."

We got offered two sets of tickets that day. The first group was very outwardly appealing, and they deliberately seeked us out and offered us the tickets. While the second group was not very visually appealing, was loud, and didn't seek us out. But had I not been a Christian that day, which do you think I would have been more willing to tell me about God? Maybe someone who didn't care who I was they just had a free gift and all I had to do was say "Me, I'll take it." These men didn't need the church, the church needed them. Could it possible be that the agent that God uses to bring you closer to him is a long haired freak, with a scruffy beard?

We get so caught up in who people are and what they have done. Finding all there little specks, and we discard them as unusable. I mean who can't God use? Murders? moses-unusable. Liars? Jacob-unusable. Women who sleep around? Rahab-unusable Mary Magdalene-unusable. Guys who hate the church? Paul-unusable. Young mothers, and their bastard children? Mary-unusable Jesus-unusable.

Isaiah 53:2b-3 He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.³ He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

For every single person you can find me in the Bible, I can give you a perfectly good reason why they "can't" be used for the spreading of the gospel, yes even God's son.

And every time God would prove me wrong.