Picking Up Garbage: Cleansing Against All Odds

*Taken from my journal on 02/06/09 after an interesting experience picking up trash in the Palestinian quarter as an outreach with the Messianic synagogue we’ve been attending.*

I don’t think I was alone in having a very different idea of what “picking up trash in the Palestinian quarter” would be than what it actually was. I was expecting soda bottles and candy wrappers on the edges of a paved road. And I found myself at the foot of a steep hill, some forty feet high, covered over completely (and who knows how deeply) in rotting garbage. It’s what could only be called a landfill. The sight was gut-wrenching. And all I could think was “there’s no way; this is impossible.” The work that needed to be done… And at the end of hours, more than a hundred hands had barely made a dent in that hundred foot span.

And then I realized that a dent is still progress; that garbage was gone at least. All that was lacking was a little more time. And my mind went to Israel and the spiritual situation of the city that surrounded me. Years and years of religion, racial tension and the struggle for ownership have left a virtual landfill of man-made garbage surrounding precious souls. But God is an expert at cleansing the impure. It may not happen in a day, but eventually enough hands bearing the nail scars of the Savior will touch this land. One day, we will see clean countryside and a nation restored.