By Davalynn Spencer @davalynnspencer

Tuesday mornings I can hear the garbage truck as it makes the corner down the road from my house. I’m on an every-other-week pick-up schedule, and this last “other week” was a doozy. Every time I walked past the big blue roller bin behind the house, I gagged on fear that the garbageman wouldn’t pick it up.

I put the remains of a roasted chicken in there early in the first week. You know, those seasoned chickens you get from the market’s deli section that cost twice as much as roasting one yourself but smell sooooo good.

But after the fact, that chicken carcass did not smell good. Neither does dead turkey. Remind me to tell you a story sometime about a dead turkey and the city police.

Anyway, last Tuesday morning I watched from the window as the garbageman set the roller bin in electronic arms that lifted it above the truck’s cavernous belly and dumped it.

God bless him.

God bless all those men and women for the job they do. Can you imagine what our homes and property would look (and smell) like without those faithful workers? And yes, I know. There was a time when we did not have the luxury or need for trash collectors, and if we weren’t so wasteful, etc., etc. A blog for another time.

However, the garbageman made me think of Jesus.

Before you light a fire at my feet, think about it for a second: sin stinks. It’s rank, and over time it gets worse. We can’t take care of our sin ourselves. All the religious perfume and spiritual air freshener in the world will not cover the odor of unrepented sin. It rots. We need it removed.

Jesus does that and more for us. He doesn’t just take it away like the garbage man took my dead chicken. He paid for it with His life. He didn’t have any dead rotting sin of His own, but he took mine on Himself and paid my penalty of death.

And when he took it away, He removed it a lot farther than just across the county to the landfill.

It’s possible to go to the landfill and see the piles, be reminded that my trash is in there.

When God removes our sin, he separates it from us as far as the east is from the west. And that’s a lot farther than north from south.

Look at a globe. With your finger, start at the top or north-pole point of the globe and move your finger down. You’re moving in a southerly direction and eventually, you will hit the south-pole area. If you don’t stop, but keep going, your direction will change, and you’ll be moving in a northly direction. South and north meet at the poles.

Now try the same thing again by choosing a point on the equator, but move your finger around the globe heading east or west. Either will do.

If you’re moving in an easterly direction, do you ever run into west? If you’re moving west, do you ever run into east?

South and north meet. They turn back on each other again and again even though you keep moving straight ahead. 

East and west never meet.

When God separates me from my sin, I’m not going to run into it someday – unless I deliberately turn around and go back to it. If I keep going straight ahead with Him, I’m not going to stumble into that rotting, decomposing pile of poor choices.

Thank God for His incredible power to forgive, clean me up, and separate me from my sin.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Psalm 103:11-12

~

For a fabulous song about our sin being carried away, listen to Casting Crowns’ rendition of Glorious Day. 

“Blue was my father’s dog,” Parker said.

The graveled comment came low and quiet, more of a thought than spoken words.

“It took some time before I stopped hating him. Same with my father.”

Shock roused Clay from fatigue as well as his assumptions. He’d figured Parker Land and Cattle hadn’t had much trouble, at least among the people. No operation ran smoothly when cattle were involved, but a family spread—well, that always gave him a homesick feeling for what he’d never known and wished he had.

“You didn’t know that, did you?” Parker tore his weary eyes from the dog and looked at Clay.

“No, sir.” Deacon had mentioned Parker’s pa being hard to get on with, but he hadn’t mentioned the dog.

Parker huffed and turned back to the fire. “My father and I rarely saw eye to eye. Then he and my mother died in a blizzard and I blamed him. Hated him. For years. Took a while before I didn’t see or think of him every time I looked at Blue.”

He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Not until Mae Ann came along was I able to forgive him.”

Unsettled by the confession that hit too close to home, Clay sensed Parker wasn’t finished.

“Hate will kill a man. Eat him alive from the inside out.”

The skin on Clay’s back twitched.

“Forgiveness carries a high price, but it’s worth it.”

No words came. Clay had nothing to say or give. Only an ache in his leg, a burning in his chest, and what he thought he hadn’t heard Bittman say last Sunday.  ~An Impossible Price

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