They wouldn't take our garbage.
There it was, Monday afternoon, our little blue garbage container: waiting at the curb right where I'd left it that morning. A sign that at least for the moment, we were ahead of that steadily growing mountain of trash we accumulate all week long. But the second I grabbed the container I knew something was wrong. It was too heavy -- it was still full of our garbage!
At first I thought it was the garbage collectors' oversight. Maybe they haven't come yet, I thought, or maybe they missed our street. But no, all the other ones were empty; why did they leave just ours? I knew I'd put it out before 7:00 am, and I'd pointed the handles toward the street just like it said on the lid. Another mystery...
Sandy and I poured over the 18 page Instructions for Refuse & Recycling we'd received with our garbage container from the Department of Environmental Health; and we finally figured it out. It was my fault, of course. When they say "curbside" garbage collection, they mean curbside. There's a manhole cover on our lawn between the sidewalk and the street, and I'd placed the garbage container on top of it. I thought it looked good there, and that it'd be more stable -- just seemed like the thing to do at the time. Unfortunately, the manhole cover is 67 inches from the curb -- to reach it the garbage man would have had to stretch, or maybe step onto the lawn. They don't do that here. It's against the rules.
Living in town is harder than I thought it'd be. There are so many rules.
In truth, that's the nature of any community. We need those rules -- to know how to live together, what to expect from each other -- to know what it takes to pass a test, graduate from school, get a job, earn a paycheck, buy a car, own a house. But as often as not, the rules also tell us that we've fallen short, that we should have known better or done better, that we're not good enough. And they tell us that every day, all week long -- every day but one.
Thank God for Sunday morning. At Good Shepherd we worship the God who loves us even though we break his rules, the God who offers us love and worth as gifts we could never earn, the God who punished his son for all the rules we'll ever break and then raised him from the dead just to drive the point home. It's love like that that gives you the strength to face another day and try again -- love like we share with each other, because the Christ we serve first shared it with us.
Join us the Sundays of Easter, my friends, for a share of that love -- despite the rules you break along the way.
Pastor Jim
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E-mail your comments and questions to Pastor Jim in care of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church at gslc@sirus.com.