My high school and early college summers always included summer jobs--toting sheetrock for a building supply company, riding shotgun on a Coke truck (that would be Coca Cola), serving as a part of the "carefully trained expert moving force" for a national moving company that will go unnamed (my training involved watching a 30 minute video)--but my favorite was working for an office supply company.

The summer that I worked there, my brother and I labored under the watchful eye of an elderly man, Mr. Sumter. He was amazing. Under his tutelage, I learned how to assemble everything from conference room tables to lockers. I also learned the names of every tool known to man, or at least to Mr. Sumter. However, what I remember most was his ability to take what appeared to be a completely useless object and use it as the essential part or tool to finish a job. We would be assembling a cabinet and he would tell me to hand him a scrap of cardboard. I would wonder, what in the world is he going to do with that? Then, to my surprise, he would fold it and scrunch it under a door to hold it in place so he could screw the cabinet together with one of the aforementioned tools known to man. An hour later, doing a completely different job, he might say, "Hand me that cardboard again." (It took me awhile to learn that he was probably going to reuse these things.) Resourceful. Creative. And, very good at taking otherwise worthless and discarded items and giving them an essential use.

This is a great picture of what Jesus does with us. When it comes to serving Him, we can feel so inadequate and worthless sometimes. Yet we must remember, it's not about us. It's about Him. He can take us and use us to be the essential part of His next work. Left to our own, we are little more than a scrap of cardboard; but, in His hands, we are useful because we are in the hands of the Master. He knows what He wants to use...us. It's not about us, but about what He can do with, in and through us.

As Archbishop Rwaje remarked this past Sunday, Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows our greatest failures. He meets us where we are; and, knowing us as He does, He still desires to use us for His great purposes. To Peter, the failed disciple, Jesus said, "Follow me." To us, busted and broken as we are, He says, "Follow me. I can use someone just like you!" Jesus has the entire universe in His toolbox and He wants to use us. Amazing!

What a Savior we have...what a God we serve!

See you on Sunday.

Terrell