I remember the day vividly when the old guy saw me on the closeout rack.  I was already reeling from the fact that no one had chosen me for the purpose that I thought I had been created.  They had cut me, sewed me, assigned me a title and hung me on that rack in the fishing section.  I was named a UV protectant, long sleeved fishing shirt and certainly worth more than the humiliating $9.99 that I had been marked down to, as a last-ditch effort to make something out of nothing.  The world that I was created for had rejected me and sent me to the ‘little value’ section, soon to be forgotten.

So there I was, moved from one section of shirts, hanging new and pristine to this guy’s closet, full of shirts from too many styles ago and most without my proud heritage of purpose assignment.  I wanted these other old shirts, 1/4 zips, pull overs, short sleeved and button up shirts to see how I was made for the exciting, sun protecting, wind shielding, fish catching purpose of helping the old guy catch more fish.  He needs all the help that he can get.

So I hung.  I waited.  I eagerly anticipated the exciting days to come of flying across the water in his old bass boat, fulfilling my destiny as we fished those East TN lakes and rivers.  Life was fixing to get exciting.

Well one day he put me on and tucked me in his jeans, then cinched me tight with a belt.  Okay, this was it.  The day of my creation and purpose was here.  Hmm, this is a new one.  I wondered why he is drowning me in bug spray and why we were walking toward and into some hedges?  And that bucket for the fish suggested we were not going to be catching many and certainly not big ones.  I was confused to say the least.  But grateful to be off that wretched hanger.

So I was thrust into these bushes having sharpe thorns designed to protect these black berries that I have come to learn the old guy loves to pick.  I was shielding his arms from scratches and cuts and those evil little ticks, that God created for some reason that is hard to understand.  Ah, most things are not mine to understand, just accept.  So morning after morning when this berries are ripe and the summer sun is hottest, I am on his back, in the thickets filled with thorns, protecting the old guy and serving a purpose that brings delight to so many in the form of  fresh fruit, toppings, jam, cobblers and on and on.

As I look at my sleeves shredded from years of protecting the old guy and ponder the joy that my new purpose has brought, I can’t help but marvel at the God who makes all things new.  He takes things (us) off the marked down racks of false value assigned by the equally broken, and creates beautiful, life fulfilling and meaningful pathways of impact.  There nothing sexy as I am filled with the sweat and stained with the blood of my picking partner as we fill that small fish bucket that is in actuality an awesome blackberry pail.  There is everything purpose fulfilling as I perform my assigned role in the process of new life for those gifts the Father in Heaven has given us.  So we pick on.  Listening to the priceless words of God as we commune with him in the nature that he has created for us to delight in.  

“Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”  1 Corinthians 1:27 (MSG)

Man, I am glad that I was marked down and devalued by an unknowing world.  It was through that redirection that my life as a shirt took on the greatest imaginable purpose of impact.  I now hang in the closet full of joy and admiration for the purpose that I deliver and the value that I have been assigned.

You matter to God.  Simply put, nothing else matters.  Perhaps the question you might ask is, “Father, what would you have me do?”

You’ve got this.