Taking Out The Trash

I grew up in a small town in Yankee-land where we had all the services of treated water, sewage and garbage pick-up. But I can also remember visiting some friends and grandparents who lived in the country where things were very different. Well water varied from place to place. Some tasted good, some bad; some kind of red, some kind of black and some just plain stunk so bad you just didn’t want to use it at all. Sewage, of course, was always a septic system, not always in the best of condition. Then there was the household trash pit. As a young boy taking the trash to the pit was an adventure. Everything under the sun had been thrown in a pile for years allowing Mother Nature to tend to the recycling process at her own rate of speed and time. Tin cans by the hundreds, bottles of every shape and size, furniture and bed springs, old appliances, an ash pit for the coal burning house furnace, worn out bicycles, tires, a rusted out car or two and sometimes a wrecked vehicle which came with a story on how it got in that shape. We purchase, use, then throw it away without giving it a second thought. We are consumers and that’s what we do best, consume things. It’s still a chore that has to be done regularly, putting out the trash. It all gets hauled off to a trash pit somewhere out of sight, out of mind. Mother Nature still does her thing.
The Sunday school teacher asked Jimmie why he was late. “I was gonna go fishing, but daddy wouldn’t let me”, Jimmie replied “You have a wise father”, said the teacher. “Did he explain why you shouldn’t go fishing today?” “Sure” said Jimmie. “My dad said there wasn’t enough bait for both of us to go fishing.”
A man took his three-year-old daughter to the home improvement store. She quickly became tired of walking, so he let her ride on his shoulders. Soon after he began carrying her she started pulling on his hair. Although he asked her kindly, several times, to cease pulling his hair, she kept on. Getting annoyed, he began to severely scold her. “But daddy” she whimpered, “I’m trying to get my bubblegum back!”
[Ephesians 4: 17-32; Colossians 3: 1-9; James 1: 19-21; 1 Peter 2: 1] A consumer is generally considered to be the “end user”. Of course this involves a lot more than eating a bologna sandwich and drinking a soda. Our stomach is probably the least to receive what we consume. Our eyes and ears consume the most of what we use in this life, and unfortunately, that can tend to make our brain a sizeable trash pit. It’s the end of the year and most everyone is examining their life, making a note on the things they would like to change, making resolutions (promises) to ones self. May I suggest it’s time to take out the trash? Paul, James and Peter have made some great statements on what you must do to clean up your trash pit. Jesus teaches about taking out the trash. (Luke 11: 24-26) The trouble is, if you don’t put something back in its place you may end up with a bigger trash pit than before. So, the wisdom of the Spirit has also led the Apostles to tell us what we must replace our trash with. (Ephesians 5: 1-21; Colossians 3: 10-17; James 1: 22-25; 2 Peter 1: 3-8) Can you clean up your trash pit? Yes you can, with God’s help. Trust in the Lord to make all things right and it will happen. Don’t like some of the things in your life? Pray about them and work on change. God loves you, so much he gave us his one and only Son, sacrificed for the atonement of the sins of the world. God is willing to work on your trash pit with you today. Pray about it.