Garbage

“Nobody sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloth...” Matthew 9:16

I like buying old clothes from the ukay ukay (thrift shops where you have to sift through mounds of 2nd hand clothes). I even buy dresses, jackets and jeans with holes or tears, because I choose it for the cloth or leather, the buttons, or the embroidery. Old cloth, aside from being cheap, is still usable. I make purses, journals, dolls, brooches, and fabric collages. In our stores, we sell a lot of merchandise from recycled things like bottles, toilet paper rolls, eyeglass lenses, etc. 

Sometimes we need to open our eyes to new possibilities. Our business was built on that. My mom, who called herself an ordinary housewife, always said she had very little talent. This was not true of course. What was true was she had hardly any capital. With common sense and a lot of faith and prayer, she was able to build a business which was described in some magazine articles as “Pera sa Basura” (Money from Garbage). Just because most people would throw some things away, like used bottles, cans, cardboard, or cloth, does not mean it cannot be reused, recycled, or made into something other people would like to buy. 

The same is true with people. God will never reject anyone for any reason. I know that some people feel worthless or hopeless, have no confidence and self-esteem, perhaps because of their past, or how they were brought up. I have seen parents who shout at their children in the streets, or even in malls, “Ang tanga mo!” (You’re stupid!), “Wala ka talagang pag-asa!” (You’re hopeless!) Of course this will color what they think of themselves and how they treat others. 

If we see ourselves through God’s eyes, we will always have hope, we will always be confident. God loves us no matter what, even if other people see us as “used goods”. And just like I sift through the ukay-ukay, we just need to dig deep into God’s words to find the promises and declarations of His love we need to see us through our own particular challenges.