Million Dollar Trash

When I was a preacher, I could not let a story like this go by without using it in my next message. Stories like this make for a great introduction to get the audience with you. Can you think of some Bible stories that this could relate too? The woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, the story of Joseph are but a few of the biblical stories that you could use this with.

Of course the conclusion is where you apply it to your own life. Read my conclusion at the end of the story.

NEW YORK (AFP) — A painting found in a pile of trash on a New York street sold at Sotheby's auction house late Tuesday for a million dollars, nearly 20 years after it was stolen from a warehouse in Texas.
"Tres personajes" ("Three People"), a 1970 work by Rufino Tamayo, one of Mexico's best known artists, was bagged for 1.049,000 dollars by a north American buyer who fought off a telephone bidder, the auction house said.
It had been saved from the garbage by Elizabeth Gibson, who spotted the work while out walking one morning in 2003. She found the, measuring 98 by 130 centimeters (38 by 50 inches), in perfect condition.
"It was a Saturday morning. I went out for a coffee at 7:00 am. I saw it on the sidewalk among black plastic garbage bags," she told AFP ahead of the sale.
"I passed my way and had my coffee, but a voice inside kept telling me to go back and take the painting. So I stopped reading my book and I went back and took the painting, which had a very bad frame but was in perfect condition."
The work, with bold strokes of red, purple and yellow, was bought for 55,000 dollars in 1977 by a Texas man for his wife's birthday. The couple put it in storage while they moved house and noticed the painting was missing in 1987 when picking up their belongings at the warehouse.
Where the painting went for the next 16 years remains a mystery, but for several months after discovering it, Gibson kept it on the wall in her apartment.
Tipped off by a friend that the painting could be valuable, Gibson started investigating only to find on the Internet that the work had been featured on US television show "The Antiques Roadshow" in a segment on missing paintings.
Gibson approached Sotheby's, which helped return the painting to its original owner, who remains unidentified.

You may feel like your own life is in the garbage -- it is waste -- ready to be picked up and thrown on the garbage heap of life. Many walk by, glancing casually at your life, among empty cans of corn and used Q-Tips.

However, someone finally walks by that doesn't see trash, but a treasure.

...... you know the rest of the story.