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This City Museum Is Made of Junk

Cyd Holsclaw and Geoffrey Holsclaw write in their book, Does God Really Like Me?:

A transformation by love is on full display at the City Museum in St. Louis, Missouri. The name makes it sound like a place to learn about the history of St. Louis, which sounded a little boring to us. But good friends kept telling us we should check it out.

It was not at all what we expected. The entire museum is literally made of junk—the junk of the city transformed into a playground wonderland. The whole museum is composed of pieces of St. Louis that had been demolished, abandoned, or thrown away as useless. Concrete, rebar, rusty gears, cinder blocks, ceiling panels, broken tiles, shards of pottery, empty beer kegs, broken bottles—all things that had been tossed aside as worthless or unusable. Everything was tossed aside because it didn't belong anymore.

But the builders of the City Museum didn't see it that way. They transformed this trash into a beautiful, eclectic playground for children and adults. One room transforms scraps into a swampland forest people can swing through. Another room is a maze of bank safes and mirrors. Another is full of ladders and slides—one slide is ten stories tall! Outside people can climb high into the air through "gerbil tunnels" made of rebar, into a broken airplane suspended in the air, or onto a dilapidated school bus hanging off the side of the building.

As a family we have spent hours—actually days—exploring the different rooms, finding secret passageways, and delighting in unexpected treasures. And the whole thing is not only fun to play in, but it's also surprisingly beautiful. The whole place is a work of art.

Possible Preaching Angle:

There may be times when you feel that your life is broken and worthless. It is then that God wants you to know that he specializes in turning the broken and worthless into objects of beauty and value. This is the story of Easter in which God turns death into life.

Source:

Cyd Holsclaw and Geoffrey Holsclaw, Does God Really Like Me?: Discovering the God Who Wants to Be With Us (IVP, 2020), page 203

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