Do you remember the show Dirty Jobs? The host would go out and do some of the hardest, grossest jobs you could imagine, the kind of work most people would probably never volunteer for.
That got me thinking about the dirtiest job I ever had. When I was a teenager, I worked at a really fancy restaurant. People would finish their meals, the plates would come back to the kitchen, and all the scraps would get scraped into this giant trash can.
The problem was, every once in a while, some of the expensive silverware would get thrown away with the food.
And one of my jobs was to dig through that trash and find it.
I’m not kidding. I would literally have to dig through all that mess because there was something valuable buried in there that needed to be recovered.
And thinking back on that, it reminded me a little bit of what God asks us to do in His kingdom.
People can get themselves into some pretty messy situations. We wander. We make bad decisions. We believe things that are not true. And sometimes loving someone means being willing to step into that mess with patience and truth and help point them back to God.
James 5:19-20 says, “My brothers, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.”
That kind of work is not always clean or comfortable. It can be awkward. It can take patience. Sometimes people may not even want the help at first.
But there is something valuable there.
God sees people as worth pursuing, worth loving, and worth helping back toward the truth. And sometimes He may ask us to roll up our sleeves and be part of that work.
So if God puts someone in front of you who is in a mess, don’t be too quick to back away. There may be something valuable He wants you to help recover.