Work, Labor, Strife and Toil
I write this with a disclaimer…not because of the content, but because I cannot claim to have done anything except observe. I only stayed less than two hours, yet was still impacted deeply. So please know that there are very good people doing great work there, who need prayer and money and resources…this just didn’t happen to be my ministry place this month.
It is hard to explain exactly what I witnessed because it is probably not what you may be thinking. The first thing I noticed was the quietness. While walking up to the top of the dump, there was barely any sound at all. When at the top, the scene became much busier, with trucks constantly on the move, bringing in new loads of trash and the dwellers poking through it all searching for whatever would earn them some income. By passing many more details of our time there, I want to share with you the thoughts I came away with that day…
As we rode away in our tuk-tuk, Genesis came to mind along with the questions, “why would people ever live and work on a heap of garbage? What is driving them toil and work so hard in such a rejected place”? This passage answered the question for me:
“And to Adam He said,
Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you…Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread, til you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.
Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken”.
Since the fall of man, work has been our curse. We gave up our position in paradise (for the time being anyway) and now we have an innate, immediate need to labor in the earth. This isn’t just a passage for the farmers though…it translates into modern day cities as well. Men and women running around on Wall St. Business owners who get little to no sleep just trying make their shops or restaurants survive. And yes, farmers praying for rain so they can pay the bills. We see it everywhere…as the saying goes, we are working ourselves into the ground. Yet, this is the Lord’s doing. We messed up, and now we are reaping the consequences of disobedience.
So, I can’t judge those families on that landfill. It isn’t my lot in life, but in reality I will work just as much to pay bills, to gain wealth, to just survive…until one day, we are let back into paradise and enjoy the freedom that God originally planned for His people. For now, I will get that monthly massage to work out the muscles that are sore from having a job where I am on my feet for 12 hours a day and be thankful that I am healthy enough to work, and pray that the Lord sustains me until that day.
