This blog uses an interesting relationship between our faith walks and garbage dumps. Have you ever been to the dump? It is an interesting area, it is enormous, there is garbage everywhere, it seems disorganized, but there is a method to the garbage madness. But the one thing that you cannot escape when you go to the dump, or even drive by it, is the smell. It is foul. It is years of decay of many different types of items, and the gas that they produce, is methane. Have you ever looked at what they do with all that garbage? The reality is, they bury it. Some is buried so deep you can never get down to it, because they bury it, cover it with dirt, put more garbage on top of it, and cover it with dirt. This is done many times over on the enormous site. Most dumps have gone to ventilation systems, basically where they run pipes up out of the ground to release the methane gas. Some industries have become very clever, and built next to the dumps to use the methane as an energy source. It is free, it is abundant, and it is a green way to eliminate a byproduct of our garbage. But over time, all dumps must close, like here in the county I live in, it is full ,they had to close it. If you drive by, it is amazing that what was once a garbage dump is now green rolling hills, with massive amounts of refuse underneath. Over time, the land will be developed, and yes, there will be a neighborhood on top of what is yesterday's trash. So how does this relate to you and me, lets see if I can put this together...
Moral- In our lives, no matter who you are, what gender you are, or what your age, someone has sinned against you. Some of those sins are what we call little sins, although I have spoken before that a sin is a sin is a sin, but they don't affect us much. Little sins are easy to forgive, they are easy for us to get over, and therefore don't affect us much. But all who read this have been sinned against with a major sin. Someone in our lives has wronged us in a very severe way, and left us feeling broken and beaten. We tend to operate our psych's like manager's of a garbage dump. We take those severe wrongs against us, and bury them. We bury them so deep within our ego's that most of us are capable of even forgetting that those sins even exist. But here is the problem. Just like the garbage, these deep seeded wrongs tend to seep out like the methane from the dump. What happens is, the people around us, our loved one's, tend to be the one's that suffer from the smell of our past. To put it much simpler, our significant others tend to have to pay for the mistakes that were made by someone else, we tend to make them carry baggage that they didn't pack. Most of us don't even realize that we are making our partners and family pay for someone else's mistake, we have so cleverly buried those negative emotions that we dont even realize that we are taking it out on our families. The problem with that is, just like the houses that reside on top of old dumps, the filth that lies underneath may make you sick, it seeps into the water we drink, and it is in the air we breath. Our families are not the source of the negativity, so why do we take what is essentially a small thing, and blow it up into world war 3. Have you ever been confronted by your partner or spouse and have no idea why they are so upset, and you think to yourself, boy, talk about overreacting? It is because you are fighting someone else's battle. So what do we do, is there a solution? I think there is. First, just like the people that buy houses on old dumps, they should have researched the area and found out that they are living on garbage. With us, we need to address the most significant moments of our lives, and saddly enough, we are seldom molded from a series of happy moments, we are, however, the people who we are because if the crap that has happened to us. We have to find out what ills we have within us that are unresolved. We have to learn forgiveness, and this is where God comes in. The basis for Christianity is forgiveness. You can make alot of points that faith is this or faith is that, and those points are valid. But it all boils down to our savior on the cross, and his last utterance of words, 'forgive them, for they know not what they do.' It is the obligation of every Christ child to learn forgiveness, to recognize the sins committed against us and find a way to make peace with those ills. With forgiveness, comes trust, we will learn to rely on, and trust our partners or spouses. With that trust, we will have a greater faith, you cannot expand your faith and get closer to God if you cannot trust in God. And with no trust in God, we have no forgiveness for those around us. Like the industry that builds near a dump,we must find a way to take the old garbage in our lives, and use it as learning tools for our future, George Bush said it best when he said, ' ya fool me once, ya can't fool me again.' Thats not actually how it goes. But we must take our pasts,no matter how horrible, and use them as teaching tools for who we become, and the only way it is possible is through forgiveness of those sins. If you expect to be forgiven for your sins, you must show that same forgiveness here on Earth, do not expect more favor from the Lord than you were willing to give, you will be judged on your ability to forgive. I can almost guarantee that there are many who read this, probably all, who think of their spouse when they read it, but this parable pertains to you. Remember that if you want to make things better in your home, the first step is fixing yourself. Find your peace, live in trust, find forgiveness. We are all sinners, there are no sins cast against you that you have not sinned against God. There are no little sins, there are only little minds. JT
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