In the summer of 1986, municipal workers of Philadelphia went on strike. During that hot summer, the trash got higher and higher. Orange rinds, drink bottles, old newspapers. Junk mail, aluminum foil, chicken bones. Old shoes, dead batteries. Coffee grinds, half-eaten hot dogs, tin cans.
When it was finally collected, the amount was so great that no landfill would accept it. The owners of the ship Khian Sea, believed they could make money transporting the rubbish. So the garbage was burned, and the ashes, 15,000 tons, were poured into the holds of the Khian Sea; but at one port after another the ship was turned away.
After two years at sea, the renamed Pelicano anchored in Singapore. Dock authorities said the holds were empty. Greenpeace International maintains the Pelicano dumped its cargo in the Indian Ocean. The Lesson: No ones wants garbage. It is refuse. It is useless. It smells bad. It is toxic. It turns other things to garbage.
The writer of Ecclesiastes knew garbage can pile up in our lives if we are not diligent. So he teaches: “There is a season—there is a time to cast away” (3:6).
There is time to cast away negative thinking. Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive was written in 1944. In describing his inspiration for the lyric, Johnny Mercer reported, “I went to hear Father Divine preach; his subject was ‘you got to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative.” Eliminating the negative thinking is the key to happiness.
There is time to cast away the trash of resentment and un-forgiveness. Moses couldn’t get over the human exasperation and complaints of his people in the wilderness. All he could do was pile up his garbage of anger till it exploded and he struck the rock with his staff. It cost him the Promised Land. The denial of forgiveness hurts no one but ourselves. How much garbage of resentment, blame and anger is piled up in our hearts that it keeps us from living lives of glory? Cast it away.
There is a time to cast away the debris of judicial and love-limited proclamations and understandings about God. Any text of the Bible that attributes to God a love that is less than the most perfect of human loves is always to be suspect.
God never punishes us to make us better. God loves us because God created us. God is not a measure of mercy and love and reception; God is mercy and love and reception.
It’s interesting to me that the term “hell” is a translation of the term “Gehenna.” Gehenna was a ravine just outside Jerusalem. It was known from antiquity where human sacrifice had been made by burning. In Jesus’ day it was still where garbage was burned. Gehenna was the garbage heap! Hell is a rubbish pile!
A company had an open janitorial position. Applicants were interviewed by the president of the company. Before the interviews began, the president wadded up a piece of stationary and tossed it near the door. Each applicant was interviewed, thanked and dismissed. The wad of paper remained near the door.
Around noon, the last applicant finished his interview. After the president shook his hand, the job seeker turned to leave, stopped near the door, picked up the wadded stationary and dropped it in the nearby wastebasket. You can surmise who was hired.
Be mindful of that which clutters your life—the trash that is useless, the refuse that smells, the garbage that turns everything else to garbage. Thank God there is a time to cast away.
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