I suppose the eclectic nature of thrift stores could be unsettling, even disorienting, for some people. After all, there’s no predictable supply, no reliable order, no telling what you’ll find or even what you’re looking at. Here, you might find a cut glass candy dish that looks exactly like the one your grandmother had, or a mid-century vinyl footstool that fits perfectly in your mid-century brick ranch, or a metal flashlight that makes you feel like Nancy Drew when you use it.

The smell is unmistakable and hits you as soon as you walk through the door. It’s not exactly unpleasant, but it is distinct: the smell of mothballs and dust, of worn textiles and decaying books. It’s the smell of time and humanity and a hundred thousand different lives assembled in one place.

It’s the smell of the thrift store.

I suppose the eclectic nature of thrift stores could be unsettling, even disorienting, for some people. After all, there’s no predictable supply, no reliable order, no telling what you’ll find or even what you’re looking at. Here, you might find a cut glass candy dish that looks exactly like the one your grandmother had, or a mid-century vinyl footstool that fits perfectly in your mid-century brick ranch, or a metal flashlight that makes you feel like Nancy Drew when you use it.

In many ways, life offers up its dilemmas and choices with about as much predictability as a thrift store offers up used goods. And because we can’t custom order our lives, we must become people who can spot goodness wherever and whenever we encounter it.

Perhaps that’s why in Philippians 4:8 Paul calls us to think about whatever is pure, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and commendable and why he repeats this idea in the verse’s final phrase: “if there is any moral excellence, and if there is anything praiseworthy—dwell on these things.”

If there is anything, anywhere that is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely and commendable; whatever you can find that is excellent and praiseworthy; wherever you find it—focus you mind and attention on these things.

At the same time, Paul’s call to seek “whatever” and “anything” is not a wholesale embrace of all the world offers; it is a conditioned one. Because quite frankly, a lot of things the world offers are junk, broken beyond repair, and you’d be foolish to take them home.

Like I told my husband recently, the trick to buying clothes from Goodwill is to figure out how to not dress like you buy your clothes from Goodwill, the line between vintage and outdated being a fine one. Successful thrifting really depends on the eye of the purchaser—on whether she has developed an instinct for what’s worth buying and what’s best left on the shelf.

Does she know what is good by simply looking at it? Has she learned discernment?

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