Who is this ‘Scrap Man’?

Who is this ‘Scrap Man’?

“And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit him; and yet God has shown me that I should not call any man unholy or unclean.” Acts 10:28 (NASB)

By Bobby R. Henry, Sr.

      It’s not difficult to see messages from scriptures throughout our daily walk in life.

As I was driving to church on Sunday morning, two things popped out at me as teaching moments from lessons learned from my daily Bible reading.

Sunday mornings have always been regarded in my home as a day of reverence and personal introspections. More than other days I am searching for those exquisite nuggets of profound knowledge that leaves the undeniable truth in God’s Word open for those with “eyes to see it.”

“For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me.” — Matthew 26:11

Even though this scripture was referring to Jesus’ departing earth, it came to mind when I saw several people who had made the city bus benches their bedrooms.

What has happened to us that we are allowing bus benches to become the homes of our poor people?

When the sanctity of a bus bench is equated to a loving home, something is drastically wrong. The cart has just begun to pull the horse, or better yet the tail is wagging the dog-which-in-ever way it goes, it’s dead wrong!

Which of these two contributing factors makes the bed of a bus bench more appealing than a Tempur-Pedic TEMPUR-Cloud Supreme mattress? Is it the people who claim squatter’s rights to the bus bench or is it a system made up of people who have turned their backs on the challenged ones that have succumbed to the inability to differentiate between giving up or being satisfied with nothing?

Bus benches have become bedrooms of the homeless. “The King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me’.”       Matthew 25:40(NASB)

Continuing on my way to church, in contrast to me being allowed to peep into the privacy of the homeless in their “room with a view” I now witnessed the scrap man at work.

Throughout the areas there are men and women who spend their hours of daylight riding through neighborhoods collecting discarded metal-consequently called scrap metal. Here to applies: “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

The applicable scripture lesson does not stop with the scrap man gathering his metals of scrap but into how the discarded materials are repurposed for use.

Some materials are melted down and used in a myriad of things to benefit others, even as lifesaving instruments and some are refurbished made stronger to be used over and over again.

Nevertheless, the immediate outcome for the scrap man is the financial reward which is his first and most sought after reward, so he can supply his needs.

However, the real Scrap Man has another plan for the discarded, unwanted, broken down junk that others have abused, misused, neglected and abandoned.

So, as I watched the scrap man collect his scrap and placed it on his truck that I considered to be overweighed with displaced individual pieces of junk and a wreck on wheels waiting for an accident, I thought, “my, my, my so this is how God collects us, the broken and contrite.” To some we appear to be accidents waiting to happen, but to God he sees His ‘purer’ people, those who have come in contact with the real Scrap Man.

“Dear God, please teach me how to love those before You take us to your scrap metal yard and refurbish us into what you want us to be. Amen”

WITH GOD, SCRAP METAL IS PURE GOLD THAT HAS BEEN TRIED IN  THE FURNACE