Our Recycle Bin
On trash collection day, we have two trucks that come by. One picks up the trash, the other comes later and picks up the recycle stuff. Earlier this week, I went for a walk down our street right after the trash pick up truck had gone by. The full recycle bins were all still sitting out, so I had some fun just looking at the contents and speculating about how it might indicate something about the lives of the people who left them out.
As I walked, I noticed some people recycled very little, and some a lot. Some people recycled only one or two kinds of things. Some people might have a few aluminum cans in their bin and not much else. Others seemed to recycle almost everything. I passed one house that had set out extra bins full of paper, cardboard, cans, plastic cartons . . . most of the stuff that would fill my trash can, they had determined to recycle, even if it meant having to find extra bins to put it all in. It made me feel a little guilty, since we recycle very little. Perhaps I toss out many things as trash, when they might be recycled into something valuable.
A little later in the week, I was talking with a friend who had recently had some “trash” tossed into his life. It was ugly, smelly stuff that someone had dumped on him even though he didn’t deserve it. It occurred to me that we all have trash come into our lives. Often, we just hold our nose and try to deal with it until we can get rid of it. But God has called us to have a different attitude. God has promised that He can use it to make something good if we will only let Him. God has a giant “recycle bin” for all the trash that would come into our lives. The question is, will we just hold our nose and live with it while we wait for the trash man to pick it up? Or will we put it in God’s recycle bin and allow Him to use it to make something good?