Damaged Goods

Have you ever gone into a grocery store and noticed a cart full of items marked “Damaged Goods.” Normally you find dented cans with missing labels—just random items that for whatever reason failed to make the cut and are not considered “shelf worthy.” And when you think about it people are often classified the same way.  Life delivers unexpected lessons and incredible blows that leave us dented.  In the same way sin enters our lives and before you know it we have been stripped of all our self-worth, our dignity, our usefulness. In other words we get to feeling like the person who submitted an anonymous article to “My Ministry Minute,” a newsletter of Peniel Ministries. ”Lessons learned in the ‘School of hard knocks’ bruise us dent us and remove the label that defines who we really are. We feel as if we have been tossed into a bin, no longer worthy of a place on a shelf.” If such feelings continue to linger we can find ourselves substantiating the lie that we are second class failures and all hope is gone.  However the amazing thing is this, when you take a risk and pick up one of those bargain cans you find that it contains a very satisfying ingredient.  You may open it only to find peaches, apple sauce, or tangerine slices—all of which I love.  This brings a great realization communicated so adequately by the individual quoted earlier. “I have been looked down upon and judged by many who have seen my missing label and they have slapped their own label on me. I have wanted to say so many times to so many people, ‘Don’t judge too quickly.  My damage does not define me, but it is refining me.’  I may sometimes be at the bottom of life’s bin, but Jesus paid as high a price for those of us at the bottom as he did for those who are proudly displayed on the top shelf!”  This means if we look at each other the way God looks at us our viewpoint will be the same as the inscription I read on a tee shirt recently, “Labels are for cans not people.”  How blessed it is to know that regardless of how we feel, our God never casts us to the side to be eternally classified as “Damaged Goods.”