Garbage

 

A word about garbage.

I have to remember something important every Monday night. Every Monday night, before I can turn out the lights in our home and retire for the evening, I have to take out the garbage containers, take them out to the curb. Because early Tuesday morning a truck comes by and empties our garbage. Last night a strange remembrance came to me as I wheeled our container out to the curb. I remembered an old woman, Clara, who I wrote about many years ago. This is what I wrote one evening many years ago about Clara and her garbage. Clara died yesterday. I saw her for the first time several months ago while we were visiting relatives in her hometown. I’d heard about her before, but the sight was more than I expected. The locals called her the garbage lady. She couldn’t get inside her house because it was full of garbage. Piles stood six to eight feet high in every room. Her front door stood open, unable to be closed because of the rubble. Garbage cluttered her entire front porch. Tin cans, empty boxes, old rags, and the residue of years of living spilled over the sides of the porch like a cascading waterfall of filth that ran into the yard and filled it too. Clara sat on top of one particular heap, five feet high like a cherry atop some grotesque sundae made of a giant scoop of garbage. Frequently she would talk about why she could not go back into her home, some events she would not discuss that had caused her to fear its safety. Aren’t you afraid out here in the dark and cold? A passer by would ask, and she’d reply, I’m very often afraid, but I can’t go back inside. She didn’t spend days or weeks sitting in the midst of that squalor and filth. She spent years. Every morning a kind neighbor would bring coffee to her and local residents would walk by and wave and speak, but no one took responsibility for cleaning up Clara’s garbage. And yesterday was the rest of Clara’s life. Hypothermia and exposure to the elements were listed as the cause of death. But I’ve always wondered if the garbage was really Clara’s problem or merely what accumulated around a hurt, some fear she could never bring herself to face. Speaking of faces, I saw him again this morning. In fact, I look into his face every morning as I shave. Thinking about that garbage lady made me wonder how he was doing with the garbage in his life. I wondered how many people walk by his life every day and wish he’d do something about his anger or his resentment or his pride. I wondered how many rooms in his life were not available to him because unresolved issues stand in the doorway like a silent sentry. What fears, insecurities keep him from God’s very best for his life? Garbage is a byproduct of living. You can’t live very long without accumulating garbage. Disappointments, hurts, failures, injustice, things people have done to me, things I’ve done to other people, things I wish had never happened at all. The question is not whether life will produce garbage. The question is where in my life do I put it? There’s a big difference between a garbage dump and a compost pile. A compost is worked, it’s turned, it’s exposed, it’s allowed to break down until something that once smelled terrible becomes capable of producing life. God has his own way of doing that with the garbage in my life when I turn it over to him. The Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 5 that suffering can produce perseverance. Perseverance produces character. Character produces hope, that lasting confidence that we can have in God’s perfect plan for our lives. Challenge doesn’t suddenly become good. God produces something good from it. So I can wrap myself in some plastic facade, climb atop my own personal pile of life’s inequities and unfairness, slowly allow the accumulated garbage of my anger, my hurt, disappointment, resentment, fill the rooms in my life, or I can acknowledge that God is at work in the midst of it all and turn it over to Him. Garbage is a byproduct of living, but in the hands of God, so is a compost. The fragrance of a rose fertilized by a compost heap is an amazing, amazing aroma. 2 Corinthians 2 15 says, Our lives are a Christ like fragrance rising up to God.