Putting Things into Perspective

 (Taken from our March-April Ministry Update)

The majority of Paraguay has no garbage pick up, no recycling, and no waste management.  Because of this, most people simply burn their garbage.  We burn all of our garbage in a deep pit dug in our back yard.  I recently learned however that even burnt garbage eventually piles up.  When our pit was close to overflowing I asked a teammate, “So, what do you do when your garbage pit is full?”.  Much to my dismay he told me that he always dug it back up and transported it two hours south to the dump.  After anger and denial I accepted my fate and inwardly groaned at the thought of how much time and energy it would take to do this dirty job.  I regretted that it would keep me from doing other more important things.  But it had to be done so I bought a shovel, put on my gloves and the next day was pulling an overloaded trailer down the dirt road toward the dump. 

As I got close a black plume of smoke could be seen on the horizon and upon arriving at the dump I was not surprised to see a couple bare-footed boys sifting through the burning trash.  On previous visits to the dump I’ve encountered entire families with their small children poking through the rubbish.  As we unloaded more than a year’s worth of garbage I watched those two boys and I was forced to stop and think.  They appeared eager to dig through what I wouldn’t have touched with bare hands.  What was a reality for these boys was so foreign to me that I found I just couldn’t relate, and yet, there we were, together in the same dump.  I was there to leave some unwanted things behind, they were there to take something valuable home; for me it was an inconvenience, for them it was a part of life.  Re-disposing of our already burnt garbage that day helped me put things into perspective: I am so amazingly blessed and so astonishingly unaware of it most of the time!  As a North American I have easy access to food and things that most of our neighbors can’t even imagine having.  The same is true of my spiritual inheritance.  I have an eternal hope that I take for granted most days while those around me are sifting through a spiritual dump in search of something with lasting value. 

Perhaps the dirty job of going to the dump served a much more important purpose in my life than just emptying our burn pit.  Hopefully it taught me to become a much more generous person, sharing out of the over-abundance of my blessings like food, clothing, a car ride, toys, and my relationship with God through Jesus Christ.