The Spiritual Signifgance of Recycling

As I sat on the lovely capital beltway this morning waiting as I sometimes do for traffic to move past a crawl my mind began to go over the morning activities.  Wednesday is recycle and trash day for us. I usually try and put the stuff out the night before but sometimes I forget or just don't want to go back outside in the cold.  So I had to put the stuff out this morning.  I am constantly amazed at how much less trash we make now that we recycle.  On a regular basis there is a half full can for the garbage man if that.  I'm not totally sure why this was going through my head but then I started to think about life in general and the garbage that clutters our lives.  Many times we let the trash hold us back we let the mess and the ugly that is or was, depending on where you are in your journey at this particular moment,  be the thing we focus on.  We point to some past problem, or transgression, or relationship and say see that thing right there, that's why I can't get past where I am with my relationship with God, my family, my parents, my fill in the blank.  We let the trash pile up and then just give up.

Most people in religious authority will state that we have to get rid of the trash in our lives, "let it go, give it to God, leave it at the altar,"  Christians have all kinds of ways to sound spiritual about the muck that's in our lives, and while I totally agree that we do need to get rid of sin in our lives,  I think we are at times way to quick to try and get rid of the lessons learned.  We want to walk on in our lives forgetting the things that we learn from falling down and getting back up, worse yet there may be no sin involved in the trials that we have gone through or are going through,  it could just be that God is trying to show us some things about our self that keep us from being wholly his.  They are not necessarily sin just stuff that is allowed in our life for a reason.

Rom. 8:29  God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.

If God is going to shape our lives around that of his son then we need to realize that some of the stuff we may be trying so desperately to forget needs to be recycled.  We need to recognize it for the tool that it is to bring us into a better relationship with God and to the place he ultimately wants us to be.

While God hates sin he can use the consequences of sin in our life to bring us to the place he wants us,  while he loves us he can allow the pain that comes at times from sickness, or loss or fill in the blank to work something in our lives that will make us more pliable and ultimately more human.

Humanity was designed for relationship,  specifically relationship with God, I know a lot of people want to point to what happens when the whole thing is over, some people think we are going to be some hyper X Mannish beings.  We'll be able to communicate without opening our mouths or be some self contained star trek transporter telling Scotty to beam us wherever we want to go.  I don't buy that.  I believe there will be no sickness no pain all that stuff but I think when the whole thing is over for us, when we shuffle off this mortal coil, we will be shuffling off the copy the thing that keeps us from being what God designed us to be,  when we stop existing in the corporeal we will begin to be what we were designed to be.

So instead of trying to forget all about it, instead of pushing it under the rug, it may be time to recycle what you were trying to learn, in doing so you will find that the things that got you here can be great to help you keep on moving.

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