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I’m over 40 now and have to do unpleasant things like eat less food, drink more water and get more exercise.

So every other morning, every other week or so, I feel the need to get out and go for a walk along our rural road. A few days ago when I got that urge I started out walking, listening to the songbirds, observing the new leaves budding on the trees, watching the early spring flowers push themselves up through the trash?! That’s right, here in beautiful rural America we have a remarkable collection of roadside trash.

Every time I go for a walk I say to myself, “Someone ought to pick this stuff up (preferably the ones who have so graciously bestowed these lovely little gifts upon us).” This morning I was just saying to myself, “Someone ought to …” when suddenly right there in the ditch next to a five-quart bottle of used Quaker State 10W40 someone had littered a garbage bag (how ironic) still neatly folded as if it was fresh out of the pack. So what could I do but take the hint and begin to pick up trash.

You would be surprised the stories I came up with as I picked up trash. There was a discarded invitation for a Tupperware/Candle Lite/Thomas Kincaid home decorating party something or other, sponsored by Gina. Apparently Gina has one less friend than she originally thought because the invitation was not in someone’s cherished activity folder but was lodged between the six-month-old deer carcass and an empty McDonald’s Happy Meal bag.

There was a grocery bag full of about 10 cans of whipped cream, used, of course. Must either have been quite a banana split or a unique way to keep the kids quiet on a long trip. Empty beer cans tossed out by someone on the way home from a good time — a somewhat weight-conscious someone: quart cans of light beer, twice the buzz at half the calories. There was a nice collection of convenience store cappuccino cups and a $1.19 bottle of Pepsi with about 97u2284cents worth of it left. Did Pepsi lose the Pepsi Challenge?

All of this environmental exercise began to make me think about trash in our lives. Here are some of my observations. First, we all have it. Trash, that is. Bad habits, past mistakes, present mistakes, difficult relationships. You name it, it’s all there just like my new collection of convenience store cappuccino cups, spread through our lives in a complicated network of actions, feelings, thoughts and impulses, piles of useless, ugly stuff littering our internal highway systems.

Second, it always costs someone else to take care of our trash. Our children pick up the mess after our divorce. The teachers at school clean up after our lack of discipline at home. Our families pay dearly for our addictions to drugs or work or sex or religion, or some combination of all of the above. We do not seem to notice how much people have to pay to handle our trash. But it is very costly.

Third, a man came into this world who had no trash in his life. He had a perfect relationship with his father and he never cheated, lied, stole, hated, wimped out, nothing. His life was clean. His name was Jesus, and he gave up his perfectly clean life so that you and I could experience in Him what it would be like to have no trash in our lives.

He paid the ultimate price to handle our trash. He was taken outside the city gates of Jerusalem and thrown away in the incineration site of the city. I’m totally serious. Golgotha was the town dump. He was made trash so that you and I could experience what it is like to be clean. Even now Jesus is constantly at work picking up the remaining trash in our lives.

Finally, this is what God has called us to do as those who have experienced the transforming, cleansing power of Jesus in our lives. Peter says, “Love covers over a multitude of sins.” We are called to do what we can to alleviate the effects of trash on the lives of people around us.

Which means that sometimes we have to pick up after people who have no idea what we are doing (and therefore no gratitude). Sometimes it means cleaning up other people’s messes who are just as likely to make another mess. But here is the good news. A couple of bags of trash from someone else’s life will never compare to the barge load of trash that Jesus has carried out of my life and yours. See you on the roadside.

By the way, whoever threw that trash bag out the window of your car: Thanks.

Nathan Kline is pastor at Friendly Hills Church in Jamestown. On the side he likes sarcasm, good coffee and writing, in no particular order.