What good are beard shavings and coffee grounds?
For the Gillum family, I tend to cause irritation when I shave my face in the morning and leave little beard hairs in the sink. (To be fair, I only do it over my sink, so I fail to see the issue…lol).
Another is the presence of coffee grounds in the sink from my morning brew. Whereas I find the smell of lingering coffee delightful, Adrian does not share the same emotion toward coffee. More for me!
It’s funny how little things like these can create exasperation. Things that are just the remains of presence. We tend to do this a lot as humans, leaving little bits of ourselves everywhere. There’s something unique about the fact that a little bit of you is left everywhere you go.
But there are not just the passive irritations that get left behind; sometimes there are good things. Little notes in lunchboxes, links to funny videos, a touch of the hand on the shoulder, the sounds of kids playing in the other rooms.
As we pass through this world, we don’t just leave baggage and burdens for others. We also leave building blocks of love, things that we invest into our world that make it fuller.
You may feel like your presence doesn’t matter, that all you leave behind are the mites and motes of existence. You may feel like your thoughts, your existence don’t move the world. But friend, you matter. Every breath that you take, every prayer of care, every word of encouragement, every creation, every laugh, every tear, builds up this world.
I’ve long been informed by the poem “No Man is an Island” by Jon Donne that reads as follows:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were:
Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.
You are a part of this world. You are involved in mankind. The thing you think, the things you feel, your past, your future, your present are all essential for the fullness of our people. In a world that connects so radically yet annihilates so anonymously, we can feel like ghosts in the machine.
Jesus placed you here, with us, on purpose.
Today if you feel isolated or feel that pulling sense that lacks meaning, turn it first over to him. Look to the promises of Scripture that speak to how you are beautifully and wonderfully made. Look to the promise that eternity has been placed in your (your!) heart and that you have an entire lifetime and afterlife to continue to discover those depths. See the stories of those pressed aside, oppressed into the earth, denied, forgotten, afflicted, and how God redeemed their pain to save the anguished.
And having read, begin to plug yourself into the story. How can you become a person who shows compassion to the sick and afraid? How can you reach out and connect with those who are isolated and lonely? How can you care about those that are unlovely in the world’s eyes? How can you engage with other minds that think and believe differently than you?
One other thing that can really help this process is connecting with a church, a faith family. If we rely on clicks and likes from anonymous profile pictures, there will be an emptiness to our connection. But God places other broken redeemed people in our lives to strengthen and encourage. This life is not meant to be lived alone. Shavings and grounds on their own are an irritation, but when applied to a garden they bring growth to new things. Connect yourself in a place where believers grow together.
I read on LinkedIn today a quote that read, “You never fall into success.” The same is true as we connect in this world. If you are not intentionally looking to redeem the broken, if you think by passing through the world that things will just lock into place, you are planting shadows and harvesting ghosts. But if you begin to consider, “What if I’m the solution that God intends in this broken place,” then watch as the Spirit of the Lord begins to do things above and beyond what you could ever think or imagine with your life.
Because you’re more than shavings and grounds.
Signs and wonders y’all.
God has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. Ecclesiastes 3:11
And yet, and yet... 
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