A nondescript blue building with plate glass windows rests just off Highway 61 at the eastern entrance to Grand Marais. Driveways course down to a parking lot scarred by snow and ice furrows despite the effect of a prolonged January thaw. A short, pebbled walk leads to the front door where the occasional toe kick loosens the frost that sometimes makes the door hard to open in the deep of winter.
It is a modest building graced on the western, exterior wall by the handiwork of mini-masters, Girl Scouts using recycled paint and yesterday’s brushes. Bicycles, bed frames, and ironing boards stand as silent sentinels along the opposite wall in the back, guarding the doors through which treasures flow, in and out, following the current of opportunity.
Inside – oh inside are the treasures and the treasure keepers! This is Oddz & Endz, and, like the 1st & 2nd Thrift Store down the road and the Recycle Center across from the hospital, it is a place where old things, odd things, discarded, unwanted, dismissed things find a new life in the philosophy of “reuse, re-purpose, recycle.”
Two drawers from an old wooden desk, hardware removed and painted in and around in soft dove gray, become end tables supporting coffee mugs and table lamps, while the inside space showcases creative ingenuity. An antique steamer trunk houses silk flowers and glass vases. Beautiful charcoal sheers highlight sparkling silver tea sets; colored glass turns the front windows into a rainbow mosaic, bright and lively on a gloomy winter day; red and white lead the way to Valentine’s Day.
There is something fascinating about discovering a new purpose for an old thing. There is something hopeful and exciting about realizing that what we discard need not be destroyed. There is something satisfying about knowing that change can restore beauty and functionality.
That fascination, that hope and joy, that satisfaction is why I keep telling you about Jesus. You see, God promises us that through faith in Jesus Christ, He will take all our old hurts and hates and hellish defects and turn them into something new, something beautiful, something glorious. God will, through faith in Jesus, give us new hearts, new loves, and new life.
The Bible describes this hope like this: “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come,” (2 Corinthians 5:17, ESV). When a person acts in faith and believes what God has said about himself, and entrusts himself or herself by faith to God’s care, counting on God to keep his promises, God acts in that person’s life to make them new. New heart. New loves. New life.
Not everyone will believe. And some who say they believe prove by their lives that they really don’t believe, but to everyone who believes and commits their lives in faith to God through Jesus Christ, God gives new life. He makes all things new.
If you are looking to rid yourself of anger, despair, envy, lust, and hopelessness; if you would like to close the gap between you and God, consider faith in Jesus. Through him, God promises to make all things new.
That’s the Good News!
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. Pastor Dale McIntire has served as pastor of the Cornerstone Community Church in Grand Marais since April of 1995.
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