It’s a Wednesday as I am writing this. Also known by many in my neighborhood as garbage day. It’s a day for which I am always, always thankful. However, since my husband and/or sons handle taking it out to the curb 98% of the time, it is seldom something I think much about.
That is until summer mornings when I take my walk through the neighborhood before the garbage truck has been through. Oh how you can tell it! When you walk by one of those yet-to-be-emptied containers with a week’s worth of trash, well, it’s pungent. This is far less of a problem when I’m out walking in the winter. The trash is always there, but the added mix of heat was what was calling it to my attention today.
Heat makes the stinky even stinkier. It’s science. You can look it up but basically the warmer temperatures help turn liquids and solids into gases, which have more odor. So there are more odor-causing molecules in the air. In short, it’s more stinky.
Today as I walked by one particularly smelly spot I couldn’t help but think about how similar it works with people. What happens to us when some heat is applied? In a literal capacity we do tend to get sweaty when it gets hot and then what happens? Right. We start to stink.
I wondered about my own life. How have I stood in different moments when the heat got turned up? How many times have I let the heat get to me and started to melt? Have I disappointed God because I chose poorly. Worse, have I chased people away from God because of my stench in a particular moment when I didn’t handle it well? I’m sure there have been times when that is exactly what happened. I hope those have been few and far between but they’ll be frequent if I’m not vigilant about it.
My mind immediately goes to the well-known Biblical story of the fiery furnace. It’s in Daniel chapter 3 if you want to read it in full. I’ll paraphrase it here. Simply put, King Nebuchadnezzar wanted everyone to bow down and worship him. Our friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego wouldn’t do it. The King had the temperature of the furnace turned up and them thrown in. As they’re in the fire, the King sees a fourth figure that he says looks like the Son of God. They walked out of the fire unharmed and “the smell of the fire was not on them.”
When the pressure was applied, they held up. Then God held them. And they didn’t even have a smell. When we read on in the Book of Daniel we see that Daniel himself faces life and death pressure from King Darius. Daniel continued to pray to God when he wasn’t supposed to. The punishment was to be thrown in a den of lions. Daniel did not abandon God and God sent an angel to close the mouths of the lions.
In both of these cases when God delivered His people, the respective kings came away also praising God. When the heat got turned up, these guys stood firm and God delivered them. Not only did He deliver them, but their actions brought glory to Him in a way that other people learned of God as well.
We all have make-and-break moments throughout life that God can use for His infinite glory. Times when the heat gets turned up on us and we have to decide how we’re going to react. Choose God or not. Coming out of a fresh season of grief, I had plenty of opportunities to choose poorly. Opportunities to practice the faith I talked about. The heat was definitely turned up. Oh how I hope that someone else can praise God because of a choice I made.
We can all feel how the heat has been turned up on us lately. There are definitely opportunities to practice our faith. A global pandemic that leads to a large death toll, a degree of economic collapse, weeks on end of feeling confined because of the threat of a virus that our best people can’t wrangle yet. Still worse is the uncertain peek-a-boo game of going back to life. When should we? How can we? This won’t work? That shouldn’t be? What does he know? One friend says wear mask and the other friend says no way. We have a choice here. Choose God and His way or the fire. Choose Him.
As the heat gets turned up, I pray for more faith for all of us who could be on the verge of starting to stink. I pray that we can better practice what we preach. I pray that we can be found being relentlessly obedient to God. I pray that instead of worrying we spend more time praising Him. Let’s replace the stench of hot garbage with the sweet aroma of praise.
