Around our joint we tend to accumulate trash. You too? Seems like we constantly have feed bags from the barn, old dog beds of the Worst/Best, old cracked planters, kinked-up garden hoses, mud-laden outdoor rugs, even an old crib that was held together with bungie cords. In fact, we still find buried treasures in bags on our property (I’m told that’s how they used to get rid of trash in the olden days?).
Now we “repurpose” as much as we can, we consider ourselves earth-friendly people, but sometimes, we just got trash. So, a couple of times a year we load up the truck, tie it down, and travel slowly to the dump — oh wait, that’s not the “acceptable” term — we travel to waste management — we travel to the landfill (like that sounds so much better). Nowadays we people can even make a dump sound less harsh and more appealing, can’t we.
Anyway, we did just that thing last week. Loaded all our junk up and went to the dump. We went on free dump day, however, it wasn’t free for us because our junk wasn’t considered a certain kind of trash? No matter, it was still trash that needed disposed of.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been to the “landfill” but quite frankly, it is an engineering marvel. Whoever came up with it was pretty genius. Just think about that, someone created a way for us to get rid of all our trash. Hmmm.
When you get to the dump you drive onto a scale and you’re weighed, vehicle and trash. You are then directed where to dump your trash, based upon the contents. Smaller trucks and cars are directed about 100 yards away to throw their trash into a gigantic dumpster, easy peasy. But trash trucks, dump trucks, construction trucks, trucks with the big stuff, even trucks our size are directed to move on down the road.
After hanging a left, we started ascending a dirt road. It’s a pretty steep climb up a dirt road. I grabbed the armrest a time or two. But once you get to the top, it’s like being on top of the world. You can see as far as Maryland and Pennsylvania right from the dump in Hedgesville. The view is breathtaking…
…and so is the smell. It’s a jolt to be reminded that you’re at the dump and despite the spectacular view far off, you’re standing on trash.
After coming back to the reality of why we’re there, we start trash tossing It’s a wild kind of thing. We stand in the back of the truck and just toss our trash out onto the ground along with everyone else who’s traveled the steep hill to get rid of their trash. A gigantic front-end loader kind of thingy just keeps rolling back and forth over the trash we just threw out compacting and crushing it to smithereens. Our trash is no longer recognizable, it is obliterated, as if it never existed. We then sweep out the truck bed to make sure nothing is left behind, we get into our truck, and we descend the trash mound.
Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob.
He will teach us His ways
so that we may walk in His paths. Isaiah 2:3
When we reach the ground there’s this sign:
When you drive through the truck wash, hoses power wash the trucks to clean them and remove any yuckiness left behind and any mud from the journey.
We again drive onto the scale and we obviously weighed significantly less. We’d unloaded our burden. We had gotten rid of our trash.
Are you having some of the same thoughts I did?
I thought about my heart-trash, aka sin, the stuff I need to get rid of. I can’t even load all of it into my “truck” because I don’t yet recognize that attitude, or those words, or that tone, are actually trash.
I thought about how I let my trash build up to the point that it is sometimes overwhelming and takes a good while to toss it out.
I thought about ascending the dirt road and how it can be really messy sometimes, we’re sometimes covered in mud by the time we actually let loose our grip on our sin.
I thought about how clean we are when we descend the mountain, how we’ve been washed by the Blood of the Lamb.
I marveled at how the Most High Engineer created a way for me to get rid of the trash in my life!
I thought about how when I toss that trash, my sin, out of the bed of the truck, that it is erased, blotted out, and it is destroyed, forever, and never thought of again!
I thought about the spectacular, clear, endless view that awaits if I’m willing to get rid of the trash that is piling up and stinking up my life.
My My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, o my soul!
The Holy Spirit heightened my senses at the dump. Isn’t that awesome?!?! Who’d a thought the dump could be so thought-provoking?