Ponderings about Trash

Trash!

Today is trash day.

Well, actually, day before yesterday was trash day. But day before yesterday was New Year’s Day, a holiday... no pickup that day. Yesterday, the roads and snow were so bad that the poor garbage man didn’t get to our house. (Maybe it would be more polictically correct to call him a “Solid Waste Removal Service Provider.”) So since he missed yesterday, he came today... early... with another guy to help (two SWRSPs!) ... doing both sides of the street at the same time. So the trash is gone now. It wasn’t a lot, but I’m glad it’s gone.

I usually pride myself on how little trash we put out. Since I (not we) recycle the basics: glass, #1 and #2 plastics, and cardboard and I don’t do a lot of cooking from packages, usually we don’t have much trash. I used to say that I didn’t want Al Gore to drive by my house and say, after looking the amount of trash on the “tree lawn” (Yes, I’m from NE Ohio!), “You should not have been allowed to have six children because you create too much trash! Al Gore never came to our door, by the way!

But sometimes it feels really good to put out a whole lot of trash. In the fall we cleaned out the basement. We had so much trash that we put it out over two weeks for the sake of the SWRSP! I couldn’t help but watch as he picked it all up and threw it in the truck. I felt free and clean, and I’m sure the basement did, too.
I feel that way at the beginning of a new year, too. Last year’s failings, for the most part, remain in last year, and I can start over with new goals. To be honest, I often set mostly the same goals for a new year, but at least I have a new chance to be successful at the old ones!
And, in day-to-day life, I’m so thankful for God’s forgiveness. When I confess my sin, He is faithful to wash it away. It’s already paid for. I can start new and clean any moment of the day... no spots or stains or garbage.
And those are my ponderings about trash today.

Addenda:

The computer did not like the nominalization of "pondering."

According to the quiz that shows in which part of the country people use certain speech patterns, the only place where people call the area between the sidewalk and the street a "tree lawn" is Northeast Ohio.