How to throw a trash can away.

Someone once told the story about the difficultly he had trying to throw a trash can away. He said it’s the one thing you can’t get the garbage man to pick up. He said, “I set an old rusty garbage can out at the street one morning thinking the garbage man would understand that it needed to be thrown away.” When he came back that afternoon the can was stacked up with the rest of his empty trash cans.

The following week he put it out again and turned it upside down so the garbage collectors could see that the bottom had several holes in it, and it needed to be thrown away. When he returned home it was stacked up next to the empty cans again.

A week later he took to the trash can with a sledgehammer and smashed it up, leaving it in front of his house. When he got home not only was it stacked neatly next to the other empty trash cans but the garbage man had actually tried to beat it back into shape.

He finally did the only thing that he could do… he went to the hardware store and bought a heavy duty chain and a padlock and chained the old can to a large tree in his front yard. And sure enough, that night somebody stole it.

Worry is a lot like that trash can. We know we need to get rid of it, but that’s not so easy to achieve. Possibly the most powerful reality about worry is not just that it’s present… but how we respond to it. When we worry, when we are upset over the latest setback, when we receive notice that our job is being cut, or when our child gets sick, when the bank forecloses, when our spouse leaves, when any of these happen, who is it that usually gets the blame? It’s God, the only one who can offer the cure for hurt and worry. You know the question that we usually ask? “Why did you let this happen to me God?”

Jesus said: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” Matthew 6:25-27

Now… what part of that is hard to understand?

Jesus did not prohibit us from working for our creature comforts and needs, nor did He disallow us from thinking about those needs, but He did strongly recommend that we forego any undue and anxious thought about those needs. Worrying about such things is not only counter-productive, it’s actually harmful. We are wise indeed if we fail to be anxious about our life and its needs. Why?

Anxiety distracts us from the real purpose of a God breathed life. Martha was gently rebuked for just such thinking…. “And Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed, and Mary has chosen that good part, which will not be taken away from her.’” Luke 1041-42 NKJV

Martha was distracted and her attention was divided… here was the creator of the universe in her living room, and yet she was fussing about what they should eat!  

Likewise, if we spend time being concerned about the inconsequential aspects of life, we may well miss what the Creator is saying to us, and more importantly, doing in our lives. Couple this with the worldliness that such an attitude usually shows and we have a recipe for a mediocre Christian life. Those who are entangled in the cares of this life are not so easily disentangled.  

Is it time to throw out the trash can?