A Minute Meditation

The United State Supreme Court has ruled that it is not illegal to rummage through other people’s garbage.

According to Dr. William Rathje, a PhD from Harvard who calls himself a garbologist, a great deal can be learned about the life style of a family simply by rummaging through their garbage bin.

He cites as an example that lower income neighborhoods tend to dump used motor oil, spark plugs and the like. Middle income families will have more paint and varnishes in their trash, while the upper income families tend to spend more on pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers.

There are also more intimate things that can be learned by sorting through the things people throw away. A family’s credit status, their political affiliations, their eating and drinking habits and their romantic interests are all revealed by what they throw away.

Would you mind if we were to rummage through your garbage? What would we learn about your life style that you would rather we did not know?

Everything about us is known by our Heavenly Father, and even if we wrap, shred, or burn the things we would rather others did not see, they are all known by God, for even the very hairs of our head are all numbered.

Most of us would rather not have others reading our personal mail. Yet, the letters we write and receive are all read by God, even those which are never mailed.

There have been times when we have written a rather strong letter, especially after having received one, or having been confronted by an angry reader or listener. Fortunately, we have had the good sense to throw it away, instead of mailing it. Anyone rummaging through our garbage that day would have had their hair stand on end by what they found.

We believe God when He assures us that He will “cleanse us from all unrighteousness and will forgive our sins,” but only if we confess them to Him.

In His wisdom, God has given us the privilege of reading other people’s mail and we can learn a great deal by faithfully reading those letters. We call them “epistles” and they are the letters that Paul, Peter, James, John and Jude wrote to help others in their walk to the kingdom. They have been preserved for our benefit, “for whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.”

Let us read and reread these letters and take from them the spiritual lessons that helped those to whom they were addressed “patiently continue in well doing.”

The more we study and digest the contents of the epistles in scripture, written so long ago to encourage us to “continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and [to] be not moved away from the hope of the gospel,” the better looking our own personal garbage will be.

Then in “the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ,” our Lord will approve of not only what we threw away, but also what we did while we waited for him to return. He will say to us, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”

Will Rogers was a well-known, homespun-type philosopher and he once said, “Even if you are on the right path, you will still get run over if you just sit there.” This ties in with another saying, “If you are not on the way, you are in the way.”

We place a great deal of emphasis on being on that straight and narrow path that leads to life everlasting, but it is important that we are actually moving forward on that path.

We have all experienced the frustration of finding a car in the fast lane moving along at a slow pace. Many times these drivers cause accidents because they are in the way and it is possible It be given a ticket for obstructing traffic by going too slow in the fast lane.

We are now trying to follow the Lord Jesus Christ who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the father but by me.” David declared, “I will run the way of thy commandments.”

Since Jesus is the way, and he said for us to follow him and David tells us to “run the way of thy commandments:” it goes without saying that we are on the move. Jesus told us that “if ye love me, keep my commandments” and this involves moving and doing.

The world is certainly on the move but they are going in the wrong direction. As Jesus said, “broad is the way that leadeth to destruction and many there be which go in thereat.”

The world is actually in the fast lane on the road to destruction. Hopefully, we have long ago taken the off ramp from the world and turned up that “narrow way that leads to life.” Jesus said that few are on the narrow way, so we are not concerned with the traffic snarls that embroil the world.

Just the same, we should not simply sit in the middle of the road and be in the way. How many have blocked the path of others who are endeavoring to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, and made it difficult for them by being in the way on the way?

Paul speaks of those who put “a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.”

Jeremiah tells us about those who inquired of him “that the LORD thy God may shew us the way wherein we may walk, and the thing that we may do.” Unfortunately, they said the right words but did not mean what they said and did not walk and do the thing that the LORD commanded.

We take great comfort in the fact that we can say with David of old, “I have chosen the way of truth” but now it is time for us to “run the way of God’s commandments” beseeching Him to “teach me O LORD the way of thy statutes: and I shall keep it unto the end.”

Jeremiah, speaking on the LORD’ s behalf, tells us to “ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.”

If we ask, we shall find the “good way;” if we seek it we will find it. We seek it and find it by doing our Bible readings as God instructed Joshua when He said to him, “This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.”

There is a one-armed golfer whose score is often in the 70’s. When asked how he could play so well with only one arm, he replied, “I have learned that a good mental attitude and one arm is better than a bad mental attitude and two arms.”

This is not only true of golf but of life. We often hear about those who have overcome great obstacles to excel in sports or business.

Jesus tells us that the “children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.” This means that the children of this world are often wiser than Christadelphians in overcoming problems to excel in their chosen endeavors.

We are not concerned with golf scores, but we should learn the lesson the one-armed golfer taught us: a good mental attitude is imperative if we are to succeed in our walk to the kingdom.

Of all the people in the world, we should have the best mental attitude for we have the scriptures to guide us into godly thinking.

It is the Lord Jesus himself who tells us that “he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations.”

God in His wisdom gives us things to overcome. It is impossible to overcome if there is nothing to overcome. A high hurdler has to have some hurdles to jump over in order to win. A good tennis player needs someone on the other side of the net to hit the ball back, at least sometimes. A golfer needs sand traps, the rough and water hazards to challenge his ability to hit over, or around or through them.

It is not the challenges that make or break us. It is our attitude toward them. Paul exhorted us to have a good mental attitude toward the trials and tribulations that come our way.

He certainly was an example to us. He had a “thorn in the flesh’ ‘and three times he asked God to remove it but God’s answer was, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” Have we ever thought that God’s grace is sufficient for us too? Let us learn from Paul’s good mental attitude concerning his affliction. He said, “Most gladly will I rather glory in my infirmities.” Do we? Paul went on to say, “I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.”

This is the good attitude that God is looking for in us as well. We all have some infirmities and distresses. How do we react to them?

Can we say with Paul, “I have learned, in whatsoever state lam, therewith to be content?” Notice that Paul had to learn this. It does not come automatically. We need to learn to have a good mental attitude too. We learn from Paul’s example as well as all the faithful in every generation. Paul tells us that “those things which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me do: and the God of peace shall be with you.”

Yes, we have learned that a “good mental attitude and one arm is better than a bad mental attitude and two arms.” Because we know this, we can join with Paul in saying, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”