I Love Trash Day!

Yes, I admit it.  I love trash day.  There is just something so freeing and cleansing about it.  You put out all of your trash, all of your broken things, everything that doesn’t work, everything that you don’t want anymore, and wonderful people come by and pick it up and take it away.  Just like that, all of those bad things are gone forever (at least from you). 

There are times I wish I could put parts of my life out on the curb to have someone take those away too.  Some conversations I wish never happened, expectations that were never met, dreams that were broken, and reminders of things I have done wrong in the past.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could just put those things on the curb the night before trash pickup day and have them hauled away with the other trash?  Imagine how freeing that would be to be able to leave all of that baggage on the curb and have it taken away forever.

One of the reasons I love trash day is because it reminds me that in Christ, all of those things can be taken away.  In Psalms we are reminded that God takes our sins from us as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12) and takes our broken, dirty, and grimy selves and makes us white as snow through the blood of Jesus Christ shed for us (Isaiah 1:18).  It doesn’t matter what I have done what sins I have committed, when I ask Him, God will forgive me and take all of those things away, forever.

The problem is that we tend to still hold on to them.  We continue to beat ourselves up with them.  We hold ourselves down, and remind ourselves of how awful we really are.  While it is true that we need to learn from our sins and mistakes, it is also true that we need to lay them down and let God take them, transform them, and heal our brokenness.  Not always an easy thing to do, and just hearing someone tell you to “let go and let God” doesn’t always help.   It is a process.  A process that takes time, prayer, reading God’s word, allowing God to work in you, and being surrounded by a family of faith who are there to remind you that we are all broken, we all make mistakes, but we worship a God who can and will forgive us and make us new in Christ.