From Trash to Treasure

I remember back when I was little, we lived on a compound in Saudi Arabia. As a child of 5 or 6 one of my joys was collecting little “treasures” on the compound grounds. All we had was a playground with a couple trees and a sandy floor. The rest of the courtyard consisted of a tiled open area in the center of apartment buildings. I remember coming in from outside with my pockets full of my little treasures - dried orange peels, broken glass, beads, colorful pieces of plastic. Before we left the country at the age of 7, I had the maturity to realize the assorted treasures weren’t worth keeping and sadly disposed of my quaint collection. 

In another country south of Saudi Arabia, our first house was surrounded by sand - like a big sandbox with a few rocks in it. This time we stayed in our own villa but like the compound it was surrounded by a courtyard with a tall cement wall. Outside of that wall, the wind would howl, whipping up the sand - and trash, and more sand - and more trash, and more sand - and more trash - blowing it into piles and ridges, sand dunes as far as the eye could see except for the occasional house or rocky hill to interrupt the view. As any child would do if they lived in a sandbox, my sisters and I would go out to the mini dunes and dig, creating houses, sculptures and unique foods from the sand. I would find all sorts of treasures - random chip bags, old combs, a broken shoe, battered up credit cards, but my favorite was finding these little perfume bottles. They came in all shapes and sizes. Some even had gold trim or fancy designs on the outside. You see fragrance is an integral part of Arab society. It manifests in the cologne they wear anytime they step out of their small fortresses. It is demonstrated in their social affairs as they pass incense and perfume to all their guests to partake in. It stands out as you walk down the streets and get wafts of incense as the aroma penetrates and overflows from the freshly cleaned villa. This is why I would find so many perfume bottles, discarded now that they were empty and no longer needed, but a treasure to me.

The next city we moved to we lived in a duplex in a small town surrounded by mountains - not tree covered, green mountains with streams and little waterfalls. These were rough, rugged mountains, scattered sparingly with dusty green shrubs and a few green plants that dared to survive. These mountains became my jungle gym, my playfield. My sisters and I would go with my dad on adventures scaling massive rocks, climbing through crevices, seeking out whatever water source we could find because where there was water there were living organisms and my dad loved anything with life. My favourite part of these thrilling escapades was the rocks - the stones of every color, every shape, every size. I loved detecting the tiny fossils, the glimmer of mica, the potential quartz or desert diamond. Where others just saw another stone, I saw something so unique in each of these beautiful specimens and I wanted to bring them all home with me. 

Fast forward a couple years and we’re living in the States - in Knoxville, Tennessee - close to the Smoky Mountains. My world explodes - with all the new beauty and life around me that I never knew existed. There’s still some trash around - our house was across from a cemetery and close to the projects, but we could bike to the river, walk to parks, hike tree covered mountains - my world of trash, sand, and stone paled in comparison. Now I collected moss, autumn leaves, spring flowers, evergreen pinecones, and magnolia seeds. I began to gather things of beauty and value that would please those around me. I sought for the treasures that others could see. I scoffed at the little child who had treasured such trash because now at 16 years old I knew what was valuable (or so I thought).

I graduated at 17 and a year later (I’ll spare you the details for now) moved to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but not just any part of the city. I moved to Allison Hill, the most underserved, forgotten, overlooked community in the entire municipality. You could see the hopelessness, smell the poverty, taste the sorrow, hear the agony, and feel the corruption of a system stuck in apathy. Dozens of buildings literally crumbling due to disrepair, blight eating away at hundreds of properties, homes broken by addiction, single-mother households run rampant, gangs on the street, open violence and drug-deals - symptoms of a people left behind in society. And everywhere there was trash - not just windblown litter, but literal mountains of debris from gutted out homes, mattresses, tvs, household trash, diapers, you name it, filling abandoned properties. I was no longer in the desert - but in many ways it felt like a wasteland.

One of our homework assignments in my first few months in Allison Hill was to take something from the neighborhood - something that would be considered trash - and make a creative project. I remember thinking “That’s just like I did when I was a child… maybe that wasn’t so childish afterall.” I found an old, blue bottle (probably had some kind of whiskey or rum in it) an empty Sprite bottle, a broken red plastic cup, some bottle caps and a wire hanger. After cleaning everything thoroughly, I fashioned flowers out of the red plastic pieces using the hanger wire as stems, the green plastic as leaves, and the bottle caps for the center. Then, for the final touch I placed them in the blue “vase” on display. 

Now 5 ½ years later, I still collect bottles - not perfume bottles, though. My collection consists of cold brew bottles from places I’ve traveled to and brands I’ve tried. You could say with maturity my tastes have improved. You could say, “Ah, now she’s an adult. Knows what is important in life.” But I keep thinking of that little girl, picking up dried orange peels and broken glass because she saw the beauty in the brokenness. And I’m beginning to realize that that childlike simplicity is not ignorance but faith. I saw the value in something forgotten and thrown away and demonstrated it’s value by bringing it home. I gathered the lifeless stones and nature’s paraphernalia because I wanted to display it’s wonder to my world.

And the Lord began to speak to me - that what I thought was child’s play was actually a foretelling of what my life would become - a radiant display of the God who Sees. Every individual I encounter is a treasure. So, when I look across the table into the eyes of someone living the daily grind stuck in apathy, when I encounter a person homeless for eight years on the streets, when I pick up trash in front of a drug dealer's stoop - do I see the treasure in the brokenness?? Do I still see the value in the lost and forgotten?? Because He does. He loves the lost and the broken. He gathers them in His arms because He wants to display their beauty to His world. He wants to demonstrate their value by bringing them home. God, give us eyes to see the treasures hidden in front of us. 

I still have an elegant whiskey bottle sitting on my desk. I found it just recently, in one of our community gardens here in Allison Hill - a community beginning to hope again. It was evidently quite freshly used and completely empty, no longer useful for anything, void of purpose. So, I brought it home, cleaned it up and gathered some of the greenery and berries that winter provides to make a small arrangement for my new vase. As I sit here typing, I can see the bottle filled and full of purpose again - a symbol of the ministry God so gently invites each one of us into. Will you take what others consider trash before you and find the treasure within it? Will you look at the tough, “hard heads” and ask God to give you eyes to see them the way He does? Will you demonstrate that value by putting them in your pocket and taking them home to the Father?