Have you ever wondered what would happen if you asked God what to do with your trash? Yes, I am completely aware how insane that sounds, but over the course of the last couple of weeks I have started to notice a trend in some of my conversations. And yes... It involves our family's trash...
Does God really care about that minute detail of our lives? So often we ration our prayers and questions for God like we they are wishes from a genie. We need to wait for the big ticket items to really use one. God doesn't care about little things like our trash so lets not worry him with that. So we continue to put an emphasis on what we consider the big items and let the little everyday parts fall to the side, looking for the next big opportunity to ask God to join us in our life. We want it to look impressive when we say, God answered this prayer.
It seems like our family is in a season where we desperately need God in those little everyday decisions. It has felt very odd over the last year as we begin to ask God how to situate our daily life to be the best stewards of the resources he has placed in our care.
We are nearing the one year anniversary of the decision we made for our family that I needed to leave my job. We have been a one income family for 11 months. It was not the path we expected to take in 2015, but it is the direction that God steered our family when we started to ask the daily questions.
One of the oddest things that I have found to come out of the questions we began to ask about our daily life is our trash situation. When we started asking God what to do with various parts of our lives and habits, we found ourselves coming back to the idea of recycling. Our habit had been to just toss trash in the trash can and place the trash can out every week. Then one day a Facebook post came through both my feed and my husband's. A mutual friend shared that there was a community collection site for recycling. It was free. You didn't have to separate everything. It was less than 5 minutes from our house!
As our family began to move into recycling mode, we began to become more conscious about the packing for items we purchased. We started to think about the landfills that our trash would go to. It became a game to see how much we could move out of one trash can into the recycle bin. It created community and camaraderie in our family as we worked toward a common goal. Our 18 month old quickly turned into a 2 year old that has begun to realize the significance of the second trash can in our home. By beginning the process of recycling we have started to think about how to be good stewards in other areas, like our finances, furniture purchases and even energy usage.
Recycling has made me take a deeper look at God in the everyday aspect of our life. We truly under-use God when we relegate him to a corner of our lives marked "Important Stuff". God wants to be part of those decisions also, but the relationships that I turn to the most. The relationships that allow for the most vulnerability and connectedness are those people, who share everyday life with me. They are my group of friends that have started to meet every third Thursday evening to make freezer meals. They are the couple we exchange babysitting services with. Why do we think it's different for God? We see Jesus share everyday life with his disciples. This is how they knew what he would do when he was gone. This is how they knew how the first church should function. They knew how he handled everyday life.
This is why God cares about my trash.... If I can trust him with this seemingly insignificant role, I am laying the foundation for him to be in my life in a much better way. When the question of what do I do with my trash begins to become my first response and I let him speak into that detail of my life, it can and eventually will translate itself into the rest of my life. Because of that I find there is holiness in my trash. My trash and the fact that I dispose of something everyday means I think about what trash can the things I discard belong in. In asking that question multiple times a day, there becomes a holy connection between me and my trash, because of the mere fact I have invited God into that part of my life.
