A Pretty Package

A Pretty Package

One day last week, leaving for Bible study, I noticed that someone had placed a plastic grocery bag on top of my trash bin.  Our trash had just been picked up that day, and I did not have time at that moment to roll the trash container back up and into its hiding spot.  Later, when I got home, I realized that someone who had walked their dog that morning had dutifully picked up the dog’s deposits on someone’s lawn that morning only to place it in the brown, plastic bag and place it on top of my trash bin.  They did that knowing that trash would not be picked up for a week.  In Georgia, temperatures get into the high 80’s all the way into November.  No one wants that kind of deposit around for a week in their trash container, especially anyone who does not, intentionally, have dogs!  I still have to pray about that in order to restrain my anger at someone’s thoughtlessness.

While thinking about my unknown neighbor’s errant ways, I was reminded of a strike by the waste industry labor in New York City in 2006.  As the labor unions and government officials wrangled, garbage piled up in the Big Apple for nearly four months.  Tourism was impacted, as was quality of life.  Rumor had it that the stench of the city could be smelled for miles.  Garbage was everywhere – everywhere, that is, with the exception of one brownstone, with a clean stoop every morning.  Neighbors watched in awe as this one location had a clear pathway up to the front door.  Finally, in frustration, those neighbors amassed on the tenant’s door to ask if the occupant knew someone in high places, or had access to a private land fill, or if had contracted with private laborers.

“No,” they were told.  “Every night, I put my trash for the day into a large box, cover it in beautiful wrapping paper, put a large bow on it, and place it just outside the door to my apartment.  When I wake up the next morning, the box is always gone – stolen by someone thinking it had been left out, accidentally.”  I would love to have been with each of the thieves, day after day, as they opened the box only to discover it was full of garbage.  I hope someone mentioned the eighth of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:  'Thou shall not steal'.

Genesis 3:6 says that Eve was enticed into sin by something that was pleasant to the eyes, satisfying to the body, and appealing to the intellect.  Once opened, however, it bore the stench of garbage to the soul.

Regardless of the grocery bag in which it is placed or the lovely gift box in which it is wrapped, we need to be cautious and realize that not everything that looks good, tastes good, or sounds good is right or righteous.  We also need to recognize our own attempts to wrap our ugly behavior, poisoned emotions, or sinful thoughts in wrapping paper of excuses, causes, or rationalizations.  May God help us to determine things from His eternal perspective, rather than what seems attractive only in the moment.

© 2011 Gerry Sisk

(11/09/11)