Are you chasing plastic bottles?

While reading a blog post from either Christy and Jerry with Embracing Hope or Project 61, I really don’t remember, it stuck with me the vivid description that was given regarding the families in the garbage dump.  Many of them start out in the dump and no nothing different.  Some start with a future and some hope, such as the young woman who has one semester of her nursing degree completed or a young woman or man with a small business.  Usually, something changes, a baby is born, someone gets sick, a family member dies, they lose their place of business operation, are evicted from the shanty where they are sleeping and because of their total lack of margin in resources and support from others, they are completely derailed. 

Even if the path was less than glamorous, they had a plan, they were working to be successful, to provide for their family and to have a life.  Once that monumental moment occurs, they have to grasp at what they can get to survive and in this area of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia know as Kore or Korah, and they go to the trash dump.  They hunt and gather plastic bottles to recycle for small amounts of cash, look for food that might sustain them temporarily or other possible items of value. Usually these sweet people get stuck.  They can never get barely what they need to get through a given day; much less earn what they need to get back on track toward a sustaining life. 

Then it kind of hit me.  What about me?  What are my soda bottles that I settle for?  What do I substitute for God’s best in my life?  What are the temporary fixes that I settle for?

Do we choose ordinary jobs that take too much time?  Do we accept friendships that bring us down, distract us from real truth, and drain our being rather than iron sharpening iron?  What about time wasted, maybe not on purpose but little by little on meaningless, insignificant and certainly not eternally lasting “stuff”?  Do we even substitute God in our lives altogether for instant gratification in life that brings long term pain rather than the sustaining life that comes from living with relationship with Jesus and the guidelines he gives us to meet our eternal goals?

I agree that there is such difference between some of us and from those in Ethiopia and the devastated poor society that even a missed breath or meal could mean literally the end of a life.  We have so much more opportunity but our laziness, selfishness and complacency will often keep us from being willing to dedicate ourselves to make the changes needed to make ourselves available for God’s best.  Yes, some of us have hard stuff that happens to us too.  But, is this really the only reason we haven’t bothered to go after God’s best? 

This was the challenge that God put before me today, to look at myself and to be aware of any “plastic bottles” that I am tempted by or chasing rather than staying strong with the margin God has blessed me with and trust him to work through the difficult times and go for his best, whatever that might look like.  And you?