What do you do with rubbish?

For the past 5 days break at home, I had every good intention to spring-clean the house for Christmas. Well, the 5th day has come and gone, and apart from wiping 2 kitchen shelves, the spring cleaning hasn't gotten on much.  I did get started by poking around, and what I saw I certainly didn't like. I was shifting the plates  around the other day when a baby something scuttled out. I am not frightened by or of creepy-crawlies, be it baby or adult kind, but that obviously meant I really should do more than just poke around. Then I peeped into my wardrobe, and tried to figure out when was the last time I wore that green tingy in the corner. Honestly...I really dunno. The fashion people say if there's anything hanging in your wardrobe that hasn't seen the light of day for more than 3 years , it shouldn't be hanging there in the first place. Actually I got things hanging there for more than 10 years, but I console myself it's ok, I am not into fashion anyway. Like I said, humans tune out....
So now that my 5 days break is over, it looks like my good intention will remain just that... A good intention. Whats the saying, the road to hell is paved with good intentions....dusty shelves hiding baby somethings are definite evidence of good intentions which never got translated into action. 

Guess it can get that way with life too. All politicians intend good, if you believe them. We all wanna be good, sincerely from the bottom of our hearts. Watzat other saying...we can be sincerely wrong. We all know what rubbish is and where it belongs. Or do we, really? It's amazing how the human mind can tune out certain things we don't wanna see. Perhaps that accounts for the way the kids always answer 'where got?' when I complain of the rubbish in their rooms. How is it we can both be looking at the same pile of stuff, and I see rubbish whilst they don't see anything? I think they call it perspective. 

Perhaps that's why we are so sure God is wrong when He calls us sinners. Sinners are terrible people, we aren't terrible people, we are people who have every good intention and in fact are good and do good as much as we can, (most of the time anyway) and that makes us pretty decent, not terrible, people. Ahh, the irrefutable argument of perspective, which colors truth into mere variables of individual  interpretation. 

Guess that's why it's hard to understand what's so wrong about Adam and Eve eating 1 miserable fruit, which so happen to be the only 1 God expressly forbade them to eat. Why make such a big deal of 1 fruit, 1 little wrong, no harm done to anyone else, so what's the big fuss, man? I have a sneaky suspicion Adam and Eve must have questioned (even if it was only in their hearts) God for being so 'heavy-handed', especially since He is supposed to be loving and forgiving and all the other 'nice' stuff. For man, it was simply a first-time disobedience, a small error, but for God, it was as good as rebellion, punishable with exile from Paradise.  That's how it was then, and that's still how it is now. 

Long after Adam and Eve, we still can't agree with God that swerving a little bit off His way is a big deal. We don't agree that all sin deserves death. That's why we choose the easy way out- just reject Him and His (narrow-minded, to us) ways. We don't want to be held accountable to such a strict judge. After all, its a matter of ...perspective. So the created questions the Creator's standards and think we know better. We decide we don't need (ie don't want) to live by His standards. It's easier to simply push God out of our lives, and live it merrily the way we see it, want it and excuse it. After all that's our  individual right to freedom that no one, least of all God, can touch. So we cease to discern  the 'rubbish' we allow to accumulate in our lives, in fact we can get so used to the rubbish we don't smell its stink anymore, becoz it's become so much a part of us. Much like my kids don't see what I see in their rooms becoz they are living in it every day. 

What we don't get is no matter how 'free' we think we are, wallowing  in rubbish still stinks, actually. After all rubbish  is rubbish, by any other name. Sin is sin, to a most holy God. But the good news is grace is still grace, no matter how undeserved. That's what we still don't get... a God who in His righteous holiness loves us enuf to save us from stinking sin and consequential death  - all at His own expense. He threw man out of an earthly Eden, but opened up the way to a heavenly eternity by dumping our 'rubbish-sin' on SomeOne else. 

Rubbish is supposed to be thrown away, carted off to the dump. I may not have cleared the rubbish in my house. But at least I know my sin has all been cleared away, ever since I let Jesus Christ carry it all the way to the cross and let Himself be nailed there, bearing it for me. That's not only goodness manifested, that's love -perfected.


"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord"... 
Romans 6:23