Damaged Goods

I'm a frugal shopper, and  I will drive the extra mile to get the bargain!  If I pass a scratch and dent section in a store, I'm more than likely going to stop and see if anything fits my immediate need.  Yard sales and thrift stores don't scare me, either.  I'm not ashamed to make good use of a previously owned item.  Our local supermarket always has a couple of shopping carts off to the end of the check-out section with closeout items and damaged packaging.  It's the damaged packaging that has my attention now. 

I can't really seem to understand why a dented can of peas is less valuable than a non-dented can of peas.  In some of the countries where we've lived, any can of peas whatsoever would be welcome, much more one with a dent!  We Americans want everything to look pristine and in perfect order, or it seems to become useless.  Not me, though.  I have a profound understanding of dented cans of peas....inside that can, there are peas.  Same peas as the pretty cans.  Which is why you'll probably find me buying the scratch and dent ones, right? 

After my Grandmother's funeral, many of my family members went back to her tiny cinder block house and sat around telling funny stories about Grandmama.  One that really stuck in my head was told by my cousin.  My Grandmother made a delicious layered yellow cake with homemade chocolate frosting.  It was a basic cake, but it was so delicious and moist.  My cousin was at her house one day, trying to learn how Grandmama made that cake so good.  They mixed the ingredients just so....they baked the layers exactly...and then they turned the pans to release the cakes.  My cousin tells how one of the layers stuck a bit in the pan.  Grandmama began to fret and fret that the cake was ruined.  She worried herself over that layer being imperfect and set about gently and tediously scraping the stuck bit out of the pan with her tongue situated at the corner of her mouth like she would do when concentrating.  She fitted it back onto the spot so beautifully that my cousin says you couldn't even tell what had happened.  And then...my Grandmother took the handle end of a wooden spoon and began ruthlessly to poke holes in each layer.  She then poured the ganache-like frosting all over the cake so that the holes would fill with the chocolately goodness.  And she was done.  That was the secret to the cake being so moist.  We all just laughed and laughed that she would have worried so much over such a tiny imperfection when all along she intended to beat the living daylights out of the cake!

Which brings me back to the dented can of peas.  Is it really all that important?  In our lives, we are all bound to make mistakes - some of gargantuan proportion, some not so much.  But the point is that each of us is damaged goods to one extent or another.  I know that I will never be perfect.  I will never be good enough to earn salvation on my own.  That's OK, though, because I don't have to be without imperfection.  My salvation doesn't even depend on me.  It is all a gift to me.  The perfect life of Jesus- His death and resurrection- this is enough to cover the damage I've done. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast." None of us can say that we are perfect.  None of us can boast of lives without dents!  Each of us can receive salvation, though, through Jesus Christ!  What a wonderful thought!  People may know what we've done.  They may witness the scars of our imperfect lives, but the Lord can take us and perfect what is on the inside to be used for His glory.  It is such a blessing to know that I can take on the righteousness of Christ just by receiving.  He rights every wrong.

So...you'll probably find me in the scratch and dent section of the supermarket tomorrow.  I'll be the one sympathetically buying the dented cans.  I don't mind, though!  I know what's on the inside!