This morning is garbage day, so my hubby got up early to empty out all the pails in our house and bag the waste up to put out at the curb. It’s not a glamorous job, but someone’s gotta do it! It always makes me think of this song I heard on the radio for a while, by Tal and Acacia, called Garbage In.
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What goes in is found out.
All can see what goes in me.
I pay the price.
I fill my mind with bad things.
So horrible, I feel ashamed they show.
I've taken sin so lightly.
That lately, oh, the darkness is all I know.
The time is now,
Oh, to leave the junk behind.
The moment has arrived,
Where I no longer am blind.
It's garbage in.
There’s a lot of truth behind those lyrics and I know it is so difficult to keep all the garbage out of our minds because we see/ hear it everywhere. The most ‘innocent’ of movies still contain profanity, perversity, or even just bad attitudes. Don’t turn on the radio because the lyrics are usually sexually charged or degrading to someone. As for the television, the screen is filled with sin of all kind: fornication, adultery, murder, hate, selfishness, greed, and perversity of all kinds. Ah, but there’s always the newspaper filled with all kinds of… oops, more sin again. We hear it at work, at home and while traveling. We almost never get away from the garbage of sin.
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So, it shouldn’t be so shocking when we aren’t at our peak spiritual strength every day. With so much garbage going into us, how can we live victoriously? All that garbage is going to weigh us down and it will certainly show (come out) in our lives. Well, we really only have two choices- be defeatist or proactive. Either we say, ‘There’s nothing I can do about it, so I’ll just keep doing the best I can with how it is’ and try to justify our lack of action or we say, ‘No, I don’t have to allow this much garbage in my life’ and change: stop watching, reading, or listening to garbage. Interesting to note is how many people will come against you for doing that.
If we go by this verse and only watch, read and listen to things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, and praiseworthy (are any of us doing this?) then it will become easier to keep our minds on righteousness, and maybe we won’t sin as much. Perhaps we won’t feel bogged down by all the garbage around us. Maybe we’ll start living the victorious, abundant life the Lord wants us to have.
Are we brave enough to try?