100th Post! – Garage Sale Finds

One Man’s Trash – Another Man’s Treasure
I LOOOOOVVVVE a great garage sale.  Okay, let’s be transparent… I pretty much love any garage sale.  I love going to them.  I love having them.  I just love garage sales.  I love what they are about.  It’s about someone saying they don’t value something enough to keep it anymore, but they value it enough to try to get someone else to pay them money for it.  By having a garage sale, we are essentially saying, “My junk is not important enough for me to keep, but I do think that you should find it important enough to buy it from me.”  IT’S AWESOME!

Pricing

This is the tricky part.  And this is where PR31 and I usually see things differently.  The key is to price it low enough that someone will want to buy it, but high enough that you feel like you didn’t just give it away.  I tend to price things a little higher.  She tends to price things to actually get rid of them.  In the end, one of us usually asks the all important question… “If you saw it at a garage sale, how much would you pay for it?”

That’s when it gets real.  Because, if it’s someone else’s junk they’re trying to pawn off on me, I can be extremely frugal.  When it has been my personal item, I want to sell it for a little bit more because of the memories… the nostalgia.  But in the end, an item is really only worth what the buyer is willing to pay for it.

Sold!

Sometimes, you stumble across something at a garage sale that you really want and you can’t believe the ridiculously low price someone has on it.  It’s like they don’t really know what they have in their possession.  They see it as junk to get rid of and you see it as something of worth.

And this is a pretty amazing thought… that God saw us in the garage sale pile of life… picked us up… dusted us off… looked closely… and then made an extraordinary offer… He said, “I’ll give the life of my only Son to purchase this one.”  Wow!  Just wow!

We weren’t worth what He paid for us, but He paid it anyway because He saw something more in us than we saw in ourselves.  He saw the potential of what we could become… what He could transform us into.

So the next time you’re at a garage sale, remember that God values you at more than you or others might value you.  And let’s look for that same value in others… because He’s going to keep on looking around a little longer.

Author: Allen Chapin

- Christian, husband, dad, friend, leader, author and speaker - Life Purpose = Love & Encourage, Offering Grace & Hope - Life Motto = Living for the applause of nail-scarred hands - Life Verse = Matthew 25:21 View all posts by Allen Chapin