So, when they were filled, He said to His disciples, “Gather up the fragments that remain, so that nothing is lost.” John 6:12 (NKJV)
In the passage of scripture above, Jesus had just performed a miracle of feeding five thousand men besides women and children, with five loaves of bread and two fish. Later we see that He commanded His disciples to gather up the fragments.
This is very typical of God. With Him nothing is to be lost, nothing is insignificant, nothing goes to waste. Everything including the rejected and thrown away matters and is important and useful to God and thus should be gathered. God is interested in and goes after the last, the least and the lost.
His eye is on the little sparrow, He cares for the grass of the field, He’s even interested in the number of hairs on our head – He counts and knows their number!
So even when it comes to our life’s experiences not one of them is insignificant, not one of them is lost to Him or wasted as far as He’s concerned. Likewise, for us we shouldn’t think that those not so good, we wish never happened and fight to forget experiences are a waste or loss. There’s something in them God used and can still use to teach us, build us, take us ahead and help others. Think about the experience of Adam and Eve’s fall. We all wish it had never happened. Oh, we all wouldn’t have gone through all this suffering in the world. But listen to God’s attitude and Wisdom in all this
2 Corinthians 4:17 For our light, momentary affliction (this slight distress of the passing hour) is ever more and more abundantly preparing and producing and achieving for us an everlasting weight of glory [beyond all measure, excessively surpassing all comparisons and all calculations, a vast and transcendent glory and blessedness never to cease!]. This may be difficult to see and understand but it’s God’s view point of the fall of man and its consequences. We can only comprehend this by looking at Jesus and what He accomplished for us in the Cross.
Romans 5:18 Therefore, as through one man’s offense [judgment came] to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act [the free gift came] to all men, resulting in justification of life.
Adam’s sin brought condemnation (being sentenced to death) to all humanity, but God did not leave us there. He picked up the broken pieces, gathered the fragments through the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ His Son. Jesus took up in Himself our sin and condemnation. He died and rose for us, thus establishing our redemption and righteousness. Now we no longer look at Adam’s fall as waste but rather something God has turned around and used to demonstrate His love for us in redeeming us. Romans 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Our mistakes, broken pieces, fragments of failures, shame, regrets shouldn’t be thrown into the bin of waste but rather gathered and surrendered to God. He causes all things to work for good for us.