Nothing Wasted

“Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to set before the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. They all ate and were satisfied. And the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish. The number of the men who had eaten was five thousand.” Mark 6: 41-44 NIV

Such waste in our world! Trash bins overflow. Landfills are heaped with old appliances, furniture, and bags of garbage. Computers and electronics, outdated by new advancements, are tossed away to make room for the new. Global warming brought on by our selfish lifestyles threatens our very existence.

In contrast, God’s creation is one of efficiency. Consider the food chain. When something dies, it becomes food for something else. Digestive waste sustains other life forms or nourishes the soil to grow plants needed for food. Trees give off oxygen needed by humans; humans give off carbon dioxide used by trees. Nothing wasted.

Jesus cared about leftovers. After his creative miracle that fed five thousand with just two fish and five small loaves, he gathered the fragments. While he may have been trying to make a point, you can be sure the baskets of food were not tossed into a dumpster.

If Jesus cared about a few baskets of fish and breadcrumbs, do you think He will forget you? He doesn't waste anything. He takes our mistakes and recycles them into wisdom, restores wasted years and poor choices with his gift of redemption, salvages our heartaches and makes them a testimony of his grace, and gathers broken people and makes them whole. Psalm 56:8 says that even our tears are collected. Nothing wasted.

How comforting to know that nothing is beyond his redemption. He specializes in second chances. You can believe it—He doesn’t waste anything.

Lord, thank you for salvaging and recycling all the broken parts of our lives. We lay these fragments at your feet in Jesus’ Name.