By Pastor Rodney Tilley
This last week the news was full of trashy talk and you probably think that is where I am going with this devotional, but I really want to talk just about “trash.” Every Monday the sanitation men come by my house and pick up the trash from the week before; leftover food, old boxes, cans, and unread junk mail. It is so easy now and so much better than it used to be. Years before you would burn the garbage in some pit in the back yard or you could haul it away and dump it on some neighbor’s unsuspecting land. If there were a back road in Culberson County it would be lined with old refrigerators, carcasses of stoves, and junked cars. But it was garbage, trash, and no one wanted it around, at least not on your land and not in your house, that is, unless…..
Unless it was from the treasure trove of trash that clutters every corner of your garage and every space in your attic. It is that lampshade, yellow and crinkled. It is those “go go boots” that no one hopes will come back in style. And least we forget, it is that ugly green chair that the neighbor threw away just last week. We collect it from the past, from the present, and value it like it is some Van Gogh painting waiting to be discovered.
We save it and store it; we move it and hide it. We love our junk and if asked about ridding ourselves of its unsightly gaze and its rotting smell, we reply with, “It will come in handy one day.”
Similarly, in our own lives, we are cluttered with garbage that should have been discarded years ago. We hold on to filthy, trashy talk, and garbage thinking. We love to dislike our neighbor two doors down and enjoy remembering those times when he spoke to us unkindly. We’ve forgotten the details of the last confrontation with our superiors, but the core hatred that drives us to bitterness and despair we refuse to take to the curb. Garbage thinking and old sins we relish like relics of pride and prejudice. It is trash, but we love it.
The Bible tells us we can be “cleansed from all unrighteousness.”(I John 1:9). Not only our unrighteousness, but also the unrighteous influence of family and friends. We must allow God to rid our lives of saved memories and to clean out the recesses of our minds and hearts. It is not a pirate’s cache, it’s trash.
You might like to “dumpster dive” but in your personal life it is time to take the can to the curb and leave it. Something is rotten in Denmark, and it may be me or maybe it’s you, but it is beginning to smell. It’s trash!
For more information on taking out the trash in our lives, please call: Pastor Rodney Tilley at the Van Horn Community Church at 432-207-0015.
