Hello February, nice to meet you. How long will you be staying with us this year? February’s reply is always the same, “Not as long as the other months!” Well hopefully this time February will give us a decline in Covid cases. Let us keep diligent and keep praying for those we know who have been infected and let this month be the month we finally say good-bye to this nasty virus.
Speaking of saying good-bye to things. Just yesterday, I walked past our kitchen trash can and it was overflowing with its bounties. The second time as I passed by I could have sworn it looked back at me. At my house when it is time to empty the trash Maria and I will play a game of chicken with each other. Who will be the first to give in and break? Which one of us will finally not be able to take squishing down the trash in the wastebasket in order to squeeze just one more ounce of trash into it? Will it be the garbage boy or will it be the garbage girl? On this day, it would be me the garbage boy. I conceded to her and began to take the bag out of the waste can to take it to our trash shoot. Now this is where it gets fun. We live on the 15th floor of a building in downtown. At the end of our hallway, there is a trash shoot where, you guessed it, we throw our bags of trash and it descends all the way down to a huge garbage bin on the first floor. As I open the trash shoot, place the garbage bag over the opening, and prepare to let go of it, my heart sometimes will start to race. Sometimes as I let go of the bag, I think to myself, is there something of value in the bag that I am throwing away? Is there something that I still needed in the bag, something that the trash is hiding? Today as I let go of the trash and it fell out of my sight down the shoot, God spoke to my heart, he said to me “This month let go of those things that are weighing you down.” As the Hebrew writer says in chapter 12:1 “Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us.” There is nothing from our past life worth hanging on to. So as I walked down the hallway back to our place I prayed and asked God to give me the strength to let go of those things and the sin that so easily besets me. Let February be a month of freedom for all of us.