Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pain. Show all posts

Sunday, March 29, 2009

On garbage and other smelly stuff

Every time I've been to a garbage dump outside of the United States it has been a memorable experience. It always blows my mind that people live on the garbage dump, and work there and actually pick through the trash. And what really gets me is that nobody does anything. I mean there are enough resources in the world that nobody should have to pick through other people's garbage for a living. The only thing I can guess is that people don't realize it's going on. So I'm going to show whoever cares what it looks like. I can't wait until they figure out how to send smells over the internet. Because there isn't any way to explain what it smells like. I suggest though that you wait until your kitchen garbage can is pretty full...then stick it out in the sun for a few days. Then cut eyeholes in the bag and wear it around for a day(don't take the garbage out first). Then you can understand how it smells.

The biggest business on the dump is scrap metal. Other recyclable materials are also gathered and sold. Who do you sell scrap metal if you work on the dump? Well there's always the mob. Of course if you don't sell it to the mob--well what can you do--scrap metal doesn't taste very good. You can guess who gets most of the profit.

They built the school to keep kids off the dump. Unfortunately it doesn't always work that way.

One thing that gets me is the birds. Birds are ok far away. But up close they're dirty and gross. especially when they live by eating trash. And especially when they are vultures.

All sorts of waste gets deposited here. Including agricultural waste and pesticides, and hospital waste with needles and blood and all manner of things. It is not a safe place to grow up.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

What does God know anyway?

" Misunderstanding what God says when it says 'God is love' they think God itends [a painfree life], and hence they conclude that anything [that brings pain] indicates either that Gods wisdom, or power, or both, have broken down...God's wisdom is not and never was, pledged to make a fallen world happy , or to make ungodliness uncomfortable." J.I. Packer, "Knowing God"


I struggled with this for years, and eventually came to the same conclusion, though I could never put it in words as elegant as this. Pain in my life is not just a symptom of sin. It is a part of the plan of God for my life. God uses struggle and pain as a tool to teach me the lessons I need to learn in order to serve him and to glorify him. God is clear in his message that the purpose of my creation is to praise him and to enter into relationship with him. But just as pain is often an integral part of lessons learned in how to deal with this life for children (children in the house have taught me that almost no lesson learned is completely painfree), so it is also often an integral part in learning the lessons God has to teach me about how to live with and interact with him.