There has been a lot of cleaning going on in my flat recently, due to my flatmate moving out. And a lot of recycling, hence the title. I always like recycling because as well as getting rid of stuff that needs to be got rid of, there is the feeling that you are Doing Good at the same time; and when getting rid of glass, it is particularly satisfying to know that you are breaking glass and it is Perfectly Okay. It can be quite good at relieving stress, I find-though maybe that's just me.
So, the recycling bit was alright. Almost fun, and definitely satisfying, in that those things are gone, and don't have to be thought about any more. On the other hand, the cleaning bit definitely isn't, especially if you don't know very well what you're doing.
My mum came over to help me, which was both good and bad. Good because I did things I wouldn't otherwise have done, and bad because I had to do things I wouldn't otherwise have done. I definitely learned some stuff, but on the other hand, that day was exhausting. To be fair, though, that was the day I started to get ill, so it's just possible that may have had something to do with it. However, as a result, the place is now cleaner than it was, and cleaner than it would have got if I had been left to my own devices. And I have to admit, it is somewhat satisfying to see the difference after it has been done.
And I started thinking-I do that sometimes. A long time ago, when I was working in a cleaning job, God said to me something along the lines of that this is something Christians are supposed to do, to clean up the mess the world is in. All the mess, everywhere. So I was thinking about mess, and how easy it is to make. Some mess is sort of 'deliberate', like when something is spilled, but most, if not all of the mess we were working on was just caused by living. Apart from things like preparing food and leaving books on the floor while I'm reading them (to be fair, I do know pretty much which ones are finished and where they should go), there is also just dust-which is just what happens when there are people in a place-and when they're not. And the other thing is how easy it is to live with a certain amount of mess-first because you know you can clean it up, and/or if it's been left a while, it's easy enough to live with things the way they are. Until you have to do something about it.
So, what about the mess in the world-or in our lives? Of course, it would be easier to clean it up as we go along, always assuming of course, that we can. But if/when we don't, what then? What will happen to it and us; and what will make us clean our lives up? And, getting back to where we started, how do we recycle-and more importantly, how do we decide what can be recycled? Just a few questions-if you do have any answers, I'd be interested to hear...
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