Yes, they invested hours walking or driving around picking up discarded recyclables, often in dumpsters, trash cans, and alongside highways and byways.
This is a lot of work, considering seeing one giant lawn and Hefty bags full of these treasures, getting our shiny dime in return, nets about $5 - 8 dollars.
If it took three hours of walking, dumpster diving, and driving, then there is not any profit to be made, except, of course, the feeling of satisfaction, knowing we are cleaning up the planet.
It sounds like a way to make a deal with Mother Earth.
Greener planet without glass and cans reflecting the sunlight in Texas. A true “green new deal” without making a deal at all.
Nevertheless, no deposit, no return is a reality for some of these states.
Spiritually we get a return on our deposits of prayer, Bible reading, digesting what we read, and our worship/devotional time with Jesus, our Lord.
No recycling here except the concept of taking a dirty vessel like an empty beer bottle with a .10 cent return, recycling, it and getting our shiny outcome in return.
What about the dirty vessels we are without Christ?
Some people will let us cash in our dirty vessels by making a deal with the devil.
I would rather take my sin-filled vessel and have Jesus clean me up, to hold a better product inside. That means His Holy Spirit lives in me, having my vessel poured out wherever He wants to use me.
Is my vessel a container of honor or dishonor?
2nd Timothy 2: 20-21 declares, “But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, (dishonor) he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful for the Master, prepared for every good work.”
Are we really prepared for every good work?
Are we ready to be used by Jesus?
No matter our spiritual condition, He loves us and wants to use our lives for His Glory.
The dumpsters I physically dove into to eat were real ones.
No metaphors here.
Real filthy, maggot- infested dumpsters filled with refuse from a restaurant.
I ate at this fine food establishment. My seat at the table was not one with fine linen tablecloths. Rather old, wet cardboard boxes, mixed with trash and remnants of food discarded from the kitchen staff, and out into garbage bags with no twist ties.
Twist ties took too long for me to undo.
I tore the bags open and fished for anything somewhat edible.
Once I found a morsel or scrap, I flicked off the swarming maggots and devoured the delicious garbage.
Hence, a dumpster-diver.
I was diving deep and wide in my sin of addictions. They took me farther and deeper into insanity than I really wanted to go.
Meth, shot into my collapsed veins with a needle, drove me to the garbage can of life.
Properly named a vessel of dishonor.
Nothing noteworthy or honorable about a stinky, filthy, and addicted 18-year-old boy, who wanted to eat my dinner inside with the white tablecloths.
I did not qualify, because my money was spent on three McDonalds cheeseburgers with no fries.
That was my daily diet when I did have money to spare.
Otherwise, it was peanut butter and honey sandwiches and sweet tea when I got paid from my job in the filthy printing ink company I worked for.
My hands and fingernails remained a dark shade of charcoal black stained deep within the cuticles of my fingers and thumbs.
My callused palms were stained from the printing ink.
No chemical made could remove these imbedded stains.
No wonder I never had a girlfriend.
My sin-stained heart and sin-stained skin, to match, had the dark recesses internally and externally. It was a clear indication that I had no return because I had nothing to deposit into my life worth a penny. I was worthless in my mind.
Not worth a single, red cent.
Something needed to change, but I liked being a filthy addict.
Drugs kept me bound, and it took another near-death experience to somewhat wake me up.
This all happened prior to my Daddy’s murder in late 1974.
Months before this horrible news came to me, I had no excuses to be as bad as I was.
I went as far as stealing a clear liquid chemical from the previously mentioned printing ink company. It was used to clean out the steel vats we used to mix the printing ink in. This flammable liquid, when soaked into a cloth rag and put inside a paper sack, offered me another new chemical high.
If Meth was not bad enough, I took my addiction to another demonic level by breathing these toxic fumes from a bag closed tightly around my mouth and nose.
“Breathe deep, Joe.”
I would breathe these fumes until I actually heard the sounds of crickets getting louder and faster in my ears, until I passed out.
I would wake up an hour or so later with a headache and repeat this process until the small jar of toxic liquid was gone.
Brain damage, yes.
Heart and lung damage, yes.
Spiritual destruction?
Almost completely, until Jesus intervened.
Thank God there would be a return on His investment from His Shed Blood for former inmate number 262066 in a Texas prison.
He rescued me and gave me a new non-toxic brain, new lungs, and every other organ I must have destroyed from the 7 years of daily drug and alcohol use and abuse.
Only Jesus could help me.
Gideon, King Cyrus, King Hezekiah and others were found by God as vessels of honor, not dishonor, like I was.
Emphasis on the “WAS” because I was an addict, convicted felon, and state hospital patron.
A proper nut case in the nut house in Austin, Texas. State hospital stay for 90 days from the Austin Police Department.
Apparently, the cops did not like me directing traffic on their beat.
Just because I did not have a badge and a gun did not mean my skills as a traffic controller were not admirable. Can’t imagine why. Can you?
Bottom line is this. We reap what we sow.
I did, and so does every person on this planet.
No deposit, no return? Ask yourself a simple question.
“What are you depositing into your spirit daily?”
If you want a return on your life, put Jesus on the throne of your life, and let Him direct your paths.
It is only a short life here on this planet compared to eternity.
Make your shots count.
Learn the Bible.
It will teach you more about what to do than what not to do.
I leaned from my past horrible life, more about what not to do, than to do.
Now, with Jesus, I know the difference.
There is a difference.
He gathers the refuse in this life and recycles our garbage into worthy vessels.
You and I are holding something in our vessels.
“What is in your bottle?”
Copyright © 2025 by Joe Wilkins
