Garbage In, Garbage Out

I have a confession. I love to buy things. And I’ll confess for my wife. She loves to buy things, too. We’re not extravagant people, though. We don’t load up Neiman Marcus bags; Wal-Mart, Target, Kohls and Sams, now that’s our weaknesses. But several months ago, we made major cutbacks. Through these cutbacks I noticed on Monday mornings a strange correlation. Monday is trash day in my neighborhood; the day in which those wonderful and highly unappreciated folks come and haul off my garbage. I love them.  I noticed that as our purchasing decreased my trash can which was normally overflowing and I had to stand on top of it to smash it all down, was now less than full. All the stuff we bought came in boxes, packaging, bags and that fun plastic, bubble stuff. But now that we are buying less stuff, there’s less garbage in the house to dispose of. Less garbage in, less garbage out. More money in our pockets, less trash in the cans and we haven’t really missed anything. God has provided for all of our needs. Buying stuff was just a habit.  Many of us have other “garbage” habits that need a major cutback.

Many times we do things or make certain decisions and then cry about the consequences they bring. A law in physics states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Bible says in Galatians 6:7 that a man reaps what he sows. Plant the seed of a bad decision and you will grow a negative consequence. We don’t live in a vacuum. Our actions and decisions do ultimately bear fruit, albeit bitter or sweet. Or sticking with my trash metaphor, when we make poor decisions we are eventually bringing garbage into our lives that we will be forced to deal with and those wonderful folks who help me on Monday mornings can’t help us with this kind of garbage. The better decisions we make; good prayed over decisions, the less garbage we will have in our lives. You’ll be amazed how nice and peaceful it is not to have all of that extra clutter around.