Nothing is Wasted

This summer, our family enjoyed a holiday in Brittany, France, for a few weeks. Amidst the copious amounts of oysters, baguettes and butter we consumed, the sandy beaches and shaded forests we ambled through, and the historic towns we visited, one of my favourite pastimes happened at the end of the day. After we had dinner each evening, I would take a jug of banana peels and eggshells, chicken carcass and carrot shavings and transport it from the kitchen to the compost bin in the middle of a field near the house we were renting. It was a most satisfying trek, knowing that all this rubbish was going to make a new thing.

Nothing is wasted in God’s kitchen. 

You see this in John 6.12 - "And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, 'Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.'" 

You see this in Romans 8.28 - "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose". 

I’ve seen this in my own life, where I stand witness to God taking the broken pieces of my heart, the seemingly useless hours of pursuit on a passion project and my bruised and battered relationships and transforming it all into the fertile soil of learning experience, growth opportunity and a way to walk with others going through similar experiences.

If you are in a season of life where you are questioning ‘why’, take heart to remember that one of the biggest ‘whys’ was asked on the cross and answered when that gravestone rolled over three days later. Jesus’ death was not wasted, and neither will your suffering, you who love Him and have been called according to His purpose.

For days, I wondered what the owners of our guest house did with the compost. I got my answer one morning when, after a jog, he ushered me over to his front door and asked me whether I’d like some offerings from his garden. He went inside and came back out with a buxom bounty of yellow and green courgettes. A gift I didn’t know I needed. Talk about the story of our Christian lives.

These articles are written without the use of generative AI.