I hate Tuesday mornings. Most mornings around my house are insane, which is the way we like it, but Tuesday is the next step beyond insanity. Tuesday is trash day.

That’s the day when I have to haul my garbage around with me everywhere I go. I bag it up and carry it to work, church, my friends house, you get the picture.

My trash is the typical young parent’s trash. It overflows with poop explosions. Don’t be fooled by my daughters’ cuteness. I’m talking about the nasty, smelly kind. We have a system where we throw the poopy diapers in a bag on the back deck. On trash day I gather up the bag and carry it with me everywhere.

One really bad thing about trash day is the way my garbage affects those around me. There is this invisible, putrid cloud that envelops me, so my coworkers usually stay away. My family avoids me too. They don’t want to get any on them.

But the worst part is the toll it takes on me. It really weighs me down. I’m usually in a bad mood on trash day. It’s seriously a huge burden to carry around a bag of you-know-what all day.

Obviously, none of that happens. Actually, I run my garbage to the curb and never think about it again. And I have NO CLUE what happens to my garbage after that (and really don’t care).

But that’s not what you do is it?

That’s right. You are smack dab in the middle of a spiritual metaphor. Ouch.

Truth is, we do carry around our garbage: Our past mistakes, the way we have treated others, sins, all kinds of burdens that weigh us down.

But I have good news. I know an awesome garbage man: Jesus Christ.

WOAH! Did he just call Jesus a garbage man? Yeah, I did. That is exactly the lowly servant Christ came to be: Born in a feeding trough in a barn, and dying naked on a cross. And why?

Simple. So I wouldn’t have any junk that separated me from God. Why carry around a bunch of SEE-ARE-AYE-PEE all your life, when Christ can take it from you?

I used to think that accepting Jesus was to make my death better. You know: “after-life insurance”. But then I realized, God wants relationship with me during life. Christianity is about life, not death. And the Lord doesn’t want any kind of junk separating Him from me.

YBH? How do we get rid of the junk?1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”  It’s time to take your garbage to the curb.  And do me a favor, when you take it there, leave it there.  The garbage man will take care of it.