Today has been so beautiful in so many different ways. Left early this morning to visit my dearest friend for a day of thrift store shopping. When I crossed the Tallapoosa River bridge in Wadley, the morning mist was tap dancing across the murky water of the river, the gray fog against the cloudy water so still and serene, a picture I wished I could have photographed. In my imagination I could see myself as an Indian maiden, dressed in a beaded buckskin dress of fawn brown, cleaning fish on the river bank for breakfast, homemade straw basket holding the fish, a small deer antler knife in my hand, happy in my task for a man and family I adored. I rode on for several miles thinking about the outdoor drama Chief wrote about the Battle of Horseshoe Bend with the Creek Indians. We researched the Creek Indians for months to be accurate in the drama. We worked and wrote together well for many, many years.

The sky was another overcast bowl of melted white chocolate on my drive this morning. The sun was hiding behind her cloud covers. My friend drove us around so I watched the sky out the car window as the colors of the clouds melded together. Always amazes me the colors of an overcast sky. You glance up and then back down thinking it’s a boring view, but a few minutes of scrutiny will show blues, and grays, and whites, and occasionally a light purple. I love Father Sky’s sky canvas. He and Mother Nature were held hostage by the heavy clouds today. I didn’t get to see a watercolor painting at sunset and I miss the night sky canopy’s jewels. I looked but only saw the dark purple of clouds.

I found this quote and it’s so pertinent to me. “Romantic souls seeking real beauties go to the small shops of the small towns, not to the big shops of big cities,” Mehmet Murat Ildan. So many treasures waiting in the thrift stores. I watched my friend and noticed she gravitated to vivid colors and interesting jewelry. I was interested in the Christmas stuff, glass balls, two beautiful pink glass nosegays for Rosie’s Christmas tree.

If the world was a thrift store so many people who have no family or people who march to the beat of their own snare drum, occasionally slapping their cymbals together, would immediately find a home that fit them perfectly. Their imperfections would make them jewels on the shelves of the thrift store.

Sometime we lose patience with folks and don’t give them or their friendship long enough to evolve. We see only the cover of the book and don’t notice the beautiful words and poetry on pages inside. My daughter Rosalyn looked for the words. She had a special friend she always invited to her birthday parties when she was young that the other girls always ignored and would always say, “Why does she have to come?” Rosie had to be her shadow in the third grade, to help her when she needed help, and she continued to feel a kindness toward her for many years.

I started to think of God being in the thrift store of life and how he would find us as treasures. He would give new life to those who pray and ask for forgiveness for their sins. Psalm 113:7 says, “God raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the trash heap.” Sounds like he’s been in the thrift store to me. The next verse says, “He seats them with princes, with the princes of his people.”

Think how happy you are, if you’re a thrifter, and you find that special little treasure that thrills you. God thinks of us as his treasures and seats us in heaven with his princes. He doesn’t want us to sit idly on the shelf of life. He wants us to live and shine with his light and show others the way to his kingdom. God sees our scars as beauty marks. No matter how broken we are, no matter how tarnished our life is, and no matter how many times we’ve had to be mended by God’s love, he will always consider us treasures.

I watched my friend put one of her today’s treasures, a small framed arrangement of broken primary colored stained glass, in the window of her kitchen and the light that poured through the window made the little portrait of glass pieces a beautiful work of art. She turned around and smiled and as I watched her I thought, “She’s a wonderful blessing in my life. She’s one of my treasures.”

“Though we are incomplete, God loves us completely. Though we are imperfect, He loves us perfectly. Though we may feel lost and without compass, God’s love encompasses us completely. … He loves every one of us, even those who are flawed, rejected, awkward, sorrowful, or broken.” — Dieter F. Uchtdort