The amount of rubbish found in St Mark’s, not to mention the amount created by us as we have worked, is truly astounding. Pieces of wood, jumble for sale, broken vases, cardboard, overhanging branches, food waste, empty paint cans, used mops, cloths, and brushes… the list goes on and on.
We have been resourceful in re-using many things and often creating new purposes for items, but weekly trips to the ‘dump-it site’ have been incorporated into every session of work. Sometimes we’ve been able to pass on items to others (those with log-burning heating have been grateful for the wood!) and re-use them that way. We’ve tried to combine practicality with resourcefulness and don’t want to waste things unnecessarily. Nonetheless, some of the stuff just has to go. It has no place in this new project.
A friend of mine made a comment to me recently which has really stuck in my mind. “Put doubt in the dustbin where it belongs … not the recycling bin, as we don’t want it to see the light of day again!”
There are often issues in our lives which cause us to stumble (Hebrews 12 talks about ‘the sin that so easily entangles’) and how we deal with those issues will often determine how we progress in the future. Are we putting those issues in the right place? There really are some things that don’t need to be recycled, but need to be removed altogether.
Let’s keep running the race, free of everything which hinders, and let’s deal with the rubbish in our lives.