Photo and Commentary ©2026 by Maylan Schurch
Sabbath, October 10, 2026
Quick quiz question: What’s wrong with the above photo?
I spotted this garbage-can display a few weeks ago in our neighborhood, and since I’ve been a resident here for several years, I immediately noticed what was wrong. Can you spot it?
Here’s what I think. Since there are two green, two blue, and two gray containers, I’m almost certain that they belong to two side-by-side neighbors. (I mean, what kind of regular household would generate this mindboggling amount of weekly waste?)
Okay, so what’s the big deal? Why can’t two neighbors cuddle their waste bins together in this companionable way? Well, if they made a habit of this, they’d get dinged by the trash-picker-uppers. That’s because the rules say that bins must be left a couple of feet apart so that a trash-truck’s metal grabber-arms can have room to get a good grip before heaving the bin up and dumping it in the truck.
My thought is that the bins were separated in the usual way, emptied by the successive trucks, and later a mildly obsessive kid wandered by from school and decided to re-order them to his or her liking, maybe as a joke.
Here’s the parable point, or at least one of them. You and I need soul-trash-removal on a regular basis, and we need to allow the celestial Recycler elbow-room to do what He does best. Sometimes this means putting distance between us and other influences so that God can clean us up.
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