The Trash Man
It's so easy to get rid of trash in our culture.
Last night, I put out a bin full of trash at the end of our driveway. This morning, when I got up, it was magically gone. (Our trash guys come EARLY in the morning!) Then, when I was sitting at Starbucks this morning, I noticed a man I'll call "the trash man" walk by. He had one of those grabber things so that, without leaning down, he could pick up whatever trash someone had left in the parking lot, put it in his bucket, and move on. Magically, the trash man made it all go away and the parking lot was sparking clean.
Well, relatively speaking!
Anytime I hear someone complain about trash laying around, I can't help but think of my visit to Cairo three years ago. After the fall of the Mubarak government, the citizens decided they would try to embarrass the government by throwing all their trash in the streets. And it was everywhere. It was awful. Later, I learned that the ones who pick up the trash in that city are Christians; no one else wants the job. And there weren't enough Christians to keep up with the volume of trash being generated. So there was no magical disappearance. It was laying out there for all to see (probably still is).
I'm thinking we generally live somewhere in between those two situations.
We all have "garbage" in our lives—things that we would like to get rid of (and some things we can't seem to throw away) or things we are embarrassed by. The bad habits. The secret sins. The blemishes on our character. Trash. Garbage—things we really wish weren't a part of our lives. And some people are like the folks in Cairo: they just let their garbage out for all to see. That makes most of us uncomfortable, and so we're learned to manage our trash. Image management, they call it. Sometimes we even hire someone (a "trash man"?) to help us manage how we appear before others or what can be learned about us. We do everything we can to appear good, "holy," trash-less.
Rarely do we turn to the real "trash man," the only one who, really, can clean us up and make us new. Jesus will not force us to get cleaned up, but that's what he longs for us. He wants a better life for us, a transformed life, a trash-free life. But we have invite him in, let him do the work. We can't get rid of it on our own, but he can. He can make us good as new, or, as the Scriptures say, "whiter than snow" (Psalm 51:7). He's the trash man, and he doesn't mind getting down in the mess with us. That's why he came, after all.
Last night, I put out a bin full of trash at the end of our driveway. This morning, when I got up, it was magically gone. (Our trash guys come EARLY in the morning!) Then, when I was sitting at Starbucks this morning, I noticed a man I'll call "the trash man" walk by. He had one of those grabber things so that, without leaning down, he could pick up whatever trash someone had left in the parking lot, put it in his bucket, and move on. Magically, the trash man made it all go away and the parking lot was sparking clean.
Well, relatively speaking!
Anytime I hear someone complain about trash laying around, I can't help but think of my visit to Cairo three years ago. After the fall of the Mubarak government, the citizens decided they would try to embarrass the government by throwing all their trash in the streets. And it was everywhere. It was awful. Later, I learned that the ones who pick up the trash in that city are Christians; no one else wants the job. And there weren't enough Christians to keep up with the volume of trash being generated. So there was no magical disappearance. It was laying out there for all to see (probably still is).
I'm thinking we generally live somewhere in between those two situations.
We all have "garbage" in our lives—things that we would like to get rid of (and some things we can't seem to throw away) or things we are embarrassed by. The bad habits. The secret sins. The blemishes on our character. Trash. Garbage—things we really wish weren't a part of our lives. And some people are like the folks in Cairo: they just let their garbage out for all to see. That makes most of us uncomfortable, and so we're learned to manage our trash. Image management, they call it. Sometimes we even hire someone (a "trash man"?) to help us manage how we appear before others or what can be learned about us. We do everything we can to appear good, "holy," trash-less.
Rarely do we turn to the real "trash man," the only one who, really, can clean us up and make us new. Jesus will not force us to get cleaned up, but that's what he longs for us. He wants a better life for us, a transformed life, a trash-free life. But we have invite him in, let him do the work. We can't get rid of it on our own, but he can. He can make us good as new, or, as the Scriptures say, "whiter than snow" (Psalm 51:7). He's the trash man, and he doesn't mind getting down in the mess with us. That's why he came, after all.
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