A Litter-Pick Lesson!

When was the last time you did a litter pick? I did one on Friday. On my way to the local shop I thought the route looked ugly with litter, so I decided to retrace my steps with a litter bag. I picked up every piece of trash I could see on the route, and I discarded it in a litter bin.

On the way back home, I decided to enjoy the litter-free walk. To my surprise, I noticed that I had missed quite a few items, and these offended my eye almost as much as the mess I had previously seen.

The moral of the story? A litter-pick is never complete!

While doing this noble exercise, it occurred to me that God wants to do a similar work in the life of Christians. He is always ready to point out things that make our life ugly, and to instruct us to clear them out. The problem is, we are not always ready to see our life as God sees it. Just as many people walk through my neighbourhood seemingly oblivious to the litter, we often are oblivious to those things in our life that are ugly. And we don’t always want to have them pointed out to us, if we are honest.

Christians, it is time to let God litter-pick your life! Let’s decide to remove ugliness from our conduct, whether it is greed, selfishness, rudeness, indifference, carelessness, pride, impatience … whatever God points out to us, let’s be rid of it!

Remember though, a litter-pick is never complete! We will never be perfect while we live on this side of Heaven. Let us therefore make a regular habit of looking in God’s mirror (the Bible), heeding His prompting, and having a good clear-out.