Trash or Treasure?

It seems that Ken and I are just in that season of life.

We were all about this last summer as we were in the throes of moving out of our home of 36 years, into a smaller space of our new build set nicely in the backyard of the property we share with our son.  That was a big enough job, and whatever was accumulated in that space, that was all on us.

Now we find ourselves in what's starting to feel like the continuing saga of sorting and clearing as we ramp up a bit on the reclamation project of the cluster of rather 'vintage' buildings (plus one brand new bunkie and one brand new boathouse) that sit on the rocks next door to the cottage we actually live in when we're here.  This, my friends, is generational accumulation, and it's epic.

I'm talking about the task of sorting through very old, mostly rusty, sometimes dirty, and sometimes downright icky 'stuff'  on shelves and bins and in the corners of sheds and rooms closed off from the light of day for decades.  Or not.  Sometimes the items are newer, more accessible and not as trashed per se.  Just less than helpful or needed.  Or are they?  

One man's trash....

Everything's a decision.

At least in this clearing out of things there is no closing date to pressure me into rash decisions.  I can take my time a little, clean things off more carefully, to (perhaps) uncover some hidden beauty or (more likely) to declare something as outright garbage.  

But you don't know until you get right in there.  And everything's a judgement call.  Tedious and a tad overwhelming.   

I'll admit to the occasional bulldozer fantasy.  

But then I discover an entire bin of untouched, unopened plumbing supplies that includes that one part Ken really needed.  Or an old metal thing, filled with rusty nails cleans up real nice, and now I've got that added piece for the space I want to make look more like a country kitchen.  Oh, it's an antique can of English Wax!  Then a pile of large, heavy duty unopened tarps.  Okay then. It's probably worth picking through this stuff.  Bulldozing seems less of a desirable option. 

One of Jesus' parables, the one about the wheat and the tares in Matthew 13:24-30, comes to mind as I pick through.  It's not as well known as some of Jesus' other teachings.  But it's in a cluster of seven stories recorded by Matthew that start with the same phrase.  "The kingdom of heaven is like..."  And without getting too pedantic, we can simply define the kingdom of heaven as a process or course of events that moves us towards the realm where God's will, His plans and purposes for creation and specifically humanity, are being carried out.    God's ultimate ethic.  Everything the way God, in His perfect love, wisdom, and justice, wants it to be.

In this particular parable, both wheat and weeds are growing together in a field.  The good (which the landowner planted) and the invasive (sneakily added by an enemy) have roots intertwined, making the task of sorting it all out rather tedious and overwhelming.  The landowner wisely instructs the workers to leave it all alone 'until the harvest.'  Then things will get sorted out.  Right now, more damage than good would be done.

It is sometime asked why God doesn't just wipe out all the evil in the world.  Why wars aren't ended, and poverty and oppression and violence.  It's a fair question.  If it were up to us, we think we know what we'd do....and when.  Bring on the bulldozers.

But God waits.  And He's got His reasons.  And it's not a passive waiting.  He carefully, intimately interacts with it all, fanning smoldering wicks into flame, propping up broken stems (Isaiah 42:3), seeking (Luke 19:10), searching (Psalm 61:3), rescuing (Colossians 1:13).  There is a day of reckoning coming, but not yet.  The job of deciding what and when is God's not ours.  

I guess I just need to be reminded that my job is to root myself in goodness, strong and deep, as best I can and by the power of God's Spirit.  To be about the business of participating productively in the process, the course of events, that bring about the kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven, as best I understand it.  And to do all that even in this tedious, messy world where I don't understand so much of what goes on. 

And sometimes, a lot of time actually, there are treasures.