return: Red Letter Challenge

In addition to producing some very delicious (and creatively-flavored) milk, I love that Shatto distributes their product with minimal plastic. In fact, buying their milk in glass bottles requires putting down a “deposit.” You get your deposit back if you return the bottles.

By incentivizing the return of the the bottles, Shatto hopes to reclaim the containers which can then be reused at a lower cost than having to manufacture new ones. It’s better for the environment and the bottom line. Win-win.

The model may not be unique but it strikes me as worth celebrating.

So much of our world, at least here in eth United States, is built on quick and easy and disposable.

I’m not even talking about drive-thru food and plasticware.

We have disposable clothes and cars and homes and marriages. We are quick to use something until we grow bored or until it falls apart because it was never meant to last, and throwing it away. We don’t even think twice about doing so most of the time.

So, the concept of returning something or to something that is meant to live beyond our immediate gratification is interesting. To return…to give back…to go back. This is a way of being in the world that may have faded in popularity, but which I pray makes a…return.

As it pertains to relationships, there is much I continue to struggle to embrace in the story of the “Prodigal Son” sometimes called the story of the Lost Son as it is part of a series of stories (take a look at Luke 15) told about the lostness we experience in this world.

In the story of the son, there comes a time in his life when he decides to return to home, to the father he has abandoned so he could go and do what he wanted when he wanted.

It’s a power story perhaps most so because of the father’s welcome upon the son’s return. This is the very point I most struggle to live out. Not the return, but the embrace. To welcome back the one who was lost. To love as I have been loved.

So, as I continue my own returning, I pray for a heart that remembers some sons stay home and grow bitter, while some sons wander off only to return transformed. the father put down a deposit for each one. Both are loved. Maybe one knows the depth of that love in a way the other never will.

Life is better together,
Shawn