Monday, April 25, 2011

No dumping!

We just finished a beautiful weekend, that began on Good Friday and completed with a joyful Easter.  To add to the celebration, we had a lot of warm and sunny weather.  Having some time off I was able to take on a few projects.  The main challenge was to create a new garden area in our front yard.  There is a corner of our yard where grass has resisted growing.  It seems to get more sun and the grass tends to burn out in mid summer.  We decided to convert that area to a mulched spot for flowering plants.  A neighbor kindly lent me the use of his roto-tiller to chew up the sod so it could be removed and replaced with topsoil.  I filled my truck with about 150 square feet of sod that needed to be disposed of.   Then I drove around looking for a place to dump the sod.  I headed down a gravel road where I'd thrown sticks and small trees we'd cut down but wasn't sure about throwing the grassy sod....especially when I spotted a few other pickup trucks parked on the road and knowing that some hunt club posted "No Trespassing" sings on every third tree along the road.  I circled around to a small service road in the front of our community and pulled up to an area next to a ravine but spotted a "No trespassing.  No dumping" warning that scared me off.  Then I drove a little deeper into the country and found a gravel road that seemed like a strong possibility.  However, once I drove past all the homes tucked into the woods off the gravel road I spotted the largest "No Dumping!" sign yet.  So I decided to return to the one place I felt safe dumping my sod...my own back yard.  I threw the sod off the back of the truck and into the woods behind our house.   I reasoned that the grass would die and I could scatter the sod farther into the woods at some future point.  I thought about the problem we can have finding a place to "dump" our truckload of sin.  We can drive around with it and try to get rid of it in various ways but, ultimately, we have to come home and face the reality that the only suitable place to dump our sin is in our own yard.  The only safe place we have for this kind of dumping is on the Lord, Himself.  He has come to live in our "yard"...our lives...and allows us to Trespass on Him with our sins.  He knows that there is no other place available to receive our unwanted burdens.  He will scatter them and we will be lightened of the load and set free to finish the job.

Romans 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus,who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. 3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh

blessings,
Rob Smith

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