I saw this video some time ago and I loved it. It’s about children who live on a slum on top of a landfill making musical instruments from rubbish. It popped into my mind the other day and I loved the parallels it has with our lives.

I am so often like that all that junk and left-over packaging – at some time the shiny wears off, and I feel that really what I have to offer is likely to be, without wanting to be harsh, landfill.

My best efforts end in resentful sighs, wondering why I haven’t been noticed.

My good intentions whipped away like some discarded packaging on the side of the road.

My promises of good choices, right words, a life above reproach crumble, bend, rust.

and I realise on my own it’s all rubbish

then, I remember a One who walked on this very soil. The One who knows the dust of earth, the smell of rubbish piles.

He reaches down from heaven and he takes my rubbish and he takes time to re-shape it. He tunes me in, he allows me to hear his rhythms of Love, His song of Grace, his beat of Hope.

Maybe when you look from the outside it still looks like a collection of rubbish but when He starts to play the music is beautiful. Because that’s the beauty of it – not that he tells me to come back when I’m perfect – that he chooses to turn my rubbish into music.

He is writing a beautiful song with my life everyday. Because the song he sings over us is accompanied by the music He is writing with our lives.

Don’t be discouraged about the junk in your life – lean into the One who knows how to make beautiful instruments from what the world discards.