When was the last time you emptied your trash? We take out the garbage, delete an email, discard an old document, but how often do we empty the trash? Taking the garbage out of the house is good, but until the trash truck comes (or we take it to the burn pile or dump) that garbage is still lurking within our reach. We delete an email, but that document is still in our deleted email file. We discard an old document, but until it is truly gone from our possession…really gone…it may still find its way back.

Perhaps, another question needs to be asked; a question about the items of “trash” we choose to keep around… “just in case”…Just in case I need to remind myself of that smart aleck email…just in case I need to remind [place name here] of how much they hurt me…just in case I need to [fill in the blank].

The thing about garbage not picked up by the trash truck (or taken to the burn pile) is that the time will come when the garbage will give off an aroma unbecoming to the rest of the house. The thing about the deleted email file is that it will continue to take up valuable space that could be used for other communications or projects. The thing about an old document that hangs around is that it takes up space in our present existence – space it may have no right to possess.

One dynamic I have observed during the COVID-19 crisis is that many people are deciding what is truly important in life and what may need to be relocated to a much lower place on the value spectrum. It just so happens that this is the season of Lent – the time for deciding what needs to be discarded from our lives.

Might it be that this is the time for truly taking the trash to the burn pile…emptying our deleted documents file…giving those items of “trash” in our lives to the One who truly can remove them in such a way it will no longer be within our reach? That action may take some courage, and it may not happen all at once, but this is certain: God is the God of emptying. Jesus Christ, though being in the form of God, made the decision to empty himself for our sake, so that we would not have to live with the garbage. The question again: when was the last time you emptied your trash?