Image: ‘I Love Trash’ http://www.flickr.com/photos/55539311@N00/4689167545
Found on flickrcc.net

I dumpster dive for love.  That’s not a metaphor.  I actually drag rancid Hefty bags out of a trash can and sift through leftovers, discarded toiletries and things too disgusting to mention simply because I love my wife.

Trust me.  It’s romantic.  Maybe I should explain.

My wife has a bad habit of throwing valuable stuff away, things like bills, medication, our children, etc.  Of course she never realizes it at the time, but later, when the item turns up missing, it always ends the same way.

“I’ve looked everywhere for it,” she says. “I guess I must have accidentally thrown it in the trash.”

She doesn’t have to say anything else.  I know what she’s asking.  Will you my big, strong, handsome man please humiliate yourself by diving head-first into the dumpster, stick your hands into things that have been rotting in plastic bags for days, all for the slim chance that the thing I’m missing just might possibly be in one of the twenty bags stuffed into the trash container?

For a moment I try to resist.  Then she gives me that same doe-eyed look that Puss n’ Boots uses in the Shrek films to get me to bend to her will and the next thing I know I’m ankle deep in garbage.  Works every time.

At this point I’m convinced there’s nothing accidental about it.  I’m positive she just throws stuff away to see how far I’ll go to prove my love.  It’s like in medieval days when they would send knights on an impossible quest to win the hand of lady fair.  Although in my case the impossible quest leaves me smelling like road kill.

Yes I dumpster dive for love, but when I do, I’m in good company.   2,000 years ago God dove into the mess of humanity to retrieve a treasure of great value.  Us.

It’s hard to imagine what it was like for a holy God, a being of absolute perfection, to be born as a baby into a world of depravity, violence and greed.  It’s one thing to see the garbage of the human race from a distance.  It’s another thing to live in it.

Yet, that’s what God did, took on flesh and blood and jumped neck-deep into the trash pile.  Why?  Same reason as me.

God dumpster dives for love.  He rescues us from the junk heap of our past and calls us sons and daughters.  It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done.  It doesn’t matter if everyone has given up on you.   Even if others consider you worthless remember that often what’s trashed by man is treasured by God.

Whatever you see in the mirror this week, no matter how deep the garbage you’re dealing with, remember there is a God who meets you in your mess simply because He loves you.