Awe. Joy. Hope.
Beauty.
None of these are words most people would use to describe the place we ministered in today.
But they were all I could see.
We had the opportunity to go to a trash dump today to serve lunch and speak to people there who make their living by scavenging from the dump.
The people there pick through the mountain of trash trying to find anything that hasn’t already been claimed by someone else. The trash at the dump is usually on it’s third time being picked through. The trash goes out on the street in Granada where people will look through it before it is picked up by the trash trucks. The guys working on the trucks will then pick out what they want before taking it to the dump. By the time the trash finally reaches the dump there isn’t much left.
These people are digging through the trash, but not even the “good parts” of the trash. They get the leftovers of the leftovers of the leftovers of the leftovers.
It’s an incredibly heartbreaking and unfair picture of life.
But also a picture of hope.
From the moment we stepped out of the truck bed we were assailed with images and smells, many of which were unpleasant and beyond description. We were in the middle of garbage, with buzzards flying and hopping all around us. Mud quickly caked the bottom of my shoes in a thick layer.
There was chaos here. Messy chaos.
And yet I found myself drawn, not to the mess, but to the beauty all around.
Because here’s the thing: Beauty in the midst of ugliness stands out.
So even as we stood on a mountain of trash with the buzzards eyeing us and an unholy combination of all of the worst smells attacking our nostrils, we were also surrounded on one side by mountains and volcanoes, and on the other side Granada with Lake Nicaragua behind it.
Beauty in the midst of the mess.
And then God began to speak to me.
I was an outsider at the dump. I didn’t need anything from the trash heap. So when I arrived, I was not looking down. I was not looking to find something in the mountain of garbage.
I looked up.
I looked up and I saw beauty.
This time.
There have been many times in my life where I was in the middle of a dump, but also in the shadow of majesty, and I focused only on my own two feet and the snares surrounding them.
But when I was in the midst of all my garbage, focused on the ground at my feet, I caught glimpses of more. Hope was ignited.
I struggled with pornography for a long time. Longer than I care to admit. I felt like I was trapped in the middle of a dump with nothing but mountains of garbage around me. I couldn’t see anything else.
But then an outsider entered my dump. They didn’t see my garbage. They came and saw the beauty all around me. And they showed it to me. They lifted my eyes so I could see I was never alone. I was only as ensnared as I made myself. Those glimpses of hope became a full fledged vision.
And with a new vision and a new perspective, I walked out of my dump.
I walked into freedom.
As I think about the people in the dump, both the physical one in Granada and the spiritual ones all over the world, I can’t help but be hopeful for them.
Jesus helped me walk out of my dump. He can help them walk out of theirs.
But we don’t walk out of our dump by watching our feet. We end up just going in circles.
We walk out of the dump by fixing our eyes on the destination. On the goal. On our prize.
We walk out of the dump by focusing on Jesus.
Ephesians 2:1-6 “It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.” (MSG)
Jesus knows the way out. He wants to show us how to escape the mess.
He wants to show us the beauty in the mess.
He wants to show us he is the beauty in the mess.
