A bright, sunny January 31 and I’m outside walking, clad only in a long sleeved shirt and hooded sweatshirt (well, pants and shoes of course – they don’t have to watch me that closely yet!!). Who would have thunk it. I don’t remember many winter’s day walks such as this before. I can just hear Al Gore – “See! I told you so!” (I recently assisted my brother with his doctoral dissertation work; the help involved spending some time with former Vice President and now environmental activist Al Gore’s book, Our Choice – A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. Mr. Gore’s position is that our lack of winter snow cover and 50+ degrees instead of a more usual 5 at this time of year constitutes a global warming crisis, but I’ll leave that for a discussion another day.
Crisis or no, I thoroughly enjoyed my walk. Such unexpected warmth was truly an unexpected pleasure, until I began to see what the bright sunlight and its heat had uncovered: garbage, and a lot of it. Yesterday was trash pickup day and a lot of rubbish was apparently scattered hither and yon by the wind, which only added to the gunk piles that were revealed by the retreat of the little snow we did have. I decided to trudge on back to my house, get a couple of trash bags and do a good deed for my neighborhood while I did a good deed for my body. None of this refuse was mine, and I didn’t have plastic gloves, but the dreck was mucking up my space and that made it mine.
I don’t normally go into other people’s yards, (especially since I seemed to have enough trash in my own yard and in my own path) but there was plenty to pick up anyway: an old corn stalk that adorned someone’s lamppost last fall, a soggy Fruit Loops box, unidentifiable squishes of old newspaper, scrunched beer cans, smashed water bottles, a bag of dog poop (I think – I didn’t actually stick my nose in) tied at the end or I wouldn’t have picked it up, and even a disgusting mush of canned cranberry sauce, fork left sticking out of it where the non-eater wisely gave up. (OK, truth time: I did NOT pick up this last gross mess as I didn’t have gloves and it was just too nice a day to risk triggering my gag reflux. Sorry. If it’s still pseudo-spring tomorrow maybe I’ll glove up and take care of it. Or not.) As it was, when I returned home I washed my hands and sanitized. Twice.
Sadly, this won’t be the last time someone will have to pick up the slop from the neighborhood’s rubbish bins. In a while, it will just have to be done again; it’s just the way it is. We’re messy people, and if not me, who should pick it up? It’s my subdivision, my home; I don’t want to live in a garbage dump.
I don’t want my life to be a garbage dump, either, and in a way, unexpected heat can turn up unexpected, or previously buried garbage in my often messy life. The warm winds of disappointment blow in, turning up depression and sadness. A friend’s snub, a family member’s uncaring action causes bitterness to grow. Financial downturns sometimes reveal worry and fear. A serious medical diagnosis can foster pain and apprehension. If those things are left lying there, un-dealt-with, I might soon find myself living in that dump. It’s really difficult to pick it up the gunk myself, though, and I need help. Thankfully, Jesus is in the trash pickup business. He’s got lots of bags, doesn’t need gloves and doesn’t care what kind of mess it is. It doesn’t matter to Him that the mess isn’t even His.
We do need to ask for His help in the clean-up, though. And while He saves us once-and-for-all, this side of heaven we’ll always have trash, always be dealing with garbage. We have to be vigilant because when we think we have it all picked up, whoosh – along comes a gusty blast of adversity and there’s the debris again. Good thing for me Jesus doesn’t get tired. Or grossed out. Not even over mushed canned cranberry sauce with the forking sticking out.
"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and rightous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." I John 1:9
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