I regularly walk in the Cain Center. I see trash everywhere. There are trash cans everywhere. The refuse is not in the cans but tossed randomly on the ground. It drives me crazy. Ever since I was a little kid, I have had a thing against trash.
I was in second grade in 1970 when the Boy Scouts launched S.O.A.R. (Save Our American Resources). My Cub Scout group was part of the first Earth Day Celebration. We each had a trash bag. We also made trash sticks. We drove a nail into the end of a broom handle and then sharpened the point. Then we walked the shoulders of the roads and speared trash like we were gigging frogs. We filled bag after bag after bag. By the end of that day, I was a committed anti-liter person. Year after year, we took out empty bags and brought them back filled with the stuff people were too lazy or too selfish to dispose of properly.
While in Baylor, the only big argument my pledge class got into during our six weeks and two days of non-stop activity was about picking up trash. I was on team, “Get it All,” while others were on team, “Get Most of It and Move On.” We argued until the wee hours of the morning while we were on our hands and knees picking up float paper (the remains of the homecoming parade). We all remember the argument 42 years later.
Once on the way to work, I saw someone roll down their window and toss trash onto the street. We were at the traffic light by Daylight Doughnuts. I put my car in park and got out. I picked up the trash. I knocked on their window and said, “You dropped this.” I tossed it back into their car.
Last Saturday, I was walking my dogs and saw this dirty diaper in the parking lot. I get that the baby needed to be changed. A dirty diaper is gross, but they were obviously in a car. They could have taken it with them and tossed it in the trash at home. In the background is a massive blue dumpster that loves to eat garbage. 412ft( I measured it) from this spot is a car accessible trash can. In the middle of the Cain Center circle drop-off spot is a perfect place to drop trash into a recepticale by simply rolling down the window extending an arm and then allowing gravity to pull the debris into the black hole.
Out sin is like trash. We don’t like dealing with it. We ignore it. We try to cover it up. We blame it on others or leave it for others to deal with. The crucial breakthrough in life is realizing that God has a plan to deal with our trash. It always starts when we admit that it is ours. It always ends with us taking it to him. He is willing, able, and ready to take it. He pays the cost. The trash, the sin, kills him on the cross. He deals with it. He cleans the world of it. What we can’t do is just spread it around. What we must do is bring it to Jesus. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us ( I John 1:9-10).