Trash.

It has only recently sunk in that France is over the top beautiful. A city of historic stone architecture wrapped in parks full of emerald green. It could be argued that no place on earth has inspired more poets and painters. In the best way imaginable Paris really seems like an old Ivy League university campus. I am not sure if it is all the people reading books on grass lawns or the non-PG 13 kissing in public areas or the massive amount of walking between buildings that were old before you were even a sparkle in an eye. Whatever it may be, the city without question has this air about it. Undoubtedly, this is why it’s the one of the most visited place in the world. Consider that over 66 million people a year come to a city that’s smaller in circumference than my native Oklahoma City. Side note: American tourists are the loudest people on the planet. If you want to know who the Americans are in a given area just check the decibel levels. This is a topic for another day. That being said, not even the fact that France is full of French people keeps my defiantly loud fellow Americans away. People flock here like it’s the last place summer will ever exist and as though endless winter is the only alternative. Folks come to share in the shade of the rowed trees and to be cooled by the lazy River Seine that cuts through the city like an old scar. They come to see the roses bloom. There are endless arrays of flowers that now guard the castles whose walls are no longer needed. All of us are more than willing to fly, drive, and walk great distances to see something beautiful. (Insert comment about first sweethearts and such)

As pilgrims from every corner of the globe find their way here it creates a serious dilemma: Trash.

The trouble with all that foot traffic is that there is no real way to manage the waste of those who trample through the city. They unwrap stuff, drop stuff, and leave stuff… all of which makes a mess of things. The irony is stark. We love the beauty of a place, but are often unaware of what our presence will cost it. We are not neutral. Our very presence is a threat to the beauty we seek if we do not mind our steps and tread lightly. We are either here trashing something beautiful or making something beautiful clear all over again.

Speaking of ironies, here is one that I may never appreciate about the French. They are some of the healthiest eating, sporting people on the planet, but they all smoke like a freight train.

I have no empirical evidence, but I think Willie Nelson smokes less than the average French person.

I grew up around bars and people who smoked so I was essentially raised by the Marlboro man, but I got no love for people who blow smoke in my face when I am trying to breath standard issue oxygen (usually after walking up 1,400 steps). Side note: pray for my wife as she tries to grow a healthy baby in the midst of a country full of clouded minds and lungs. That being said, I think there is very little chance that you grew up in the States and did not at one point feel the allure of the idea of smoking. Even with how our government limited their ability to use marketing, it still had a potent ‘cool factor’ to it when my generation rolled around. Cowboys smoke. Rich people smoke. Rebels, with or without causes, smoke. Americans if we are nothing else are people who want the words ‘rich’, ‘cowboy’, and ‘rebel’ associated with us. Then there was the packaging. The box has such an elegant trim and a distinguished look about it. Something deceitfully royal feeling. As a kid I was fascinated by the amount of detail that the packaging alone had.

A beautiful coffin full of death sticks.

I had not thought about it much until the other day. I was walking to the gym and I noticed an empty pack of cigs on the ground. It was the same kind my parents used to smoke, except there was one very noticeable difference. Written in ugly black letters on a white card slipped in just underneath the packaging was the phrase “Fumer Tue.”

Translation: “Smoking Kills”

This warning took up a third of the size of the box and spoke as though it didn’t care whether you believed it or not. All the sexy marketing of Marlboro on the box was covered up with the plain and simple truth. Apparently, its message is placed alongside every pack sold in France. I was not used to seeing it so when it caught my eye I paused. I paused long enough to realize that it didn’t belong with the rest of scenery. This trash didn’t belong here. Its messing up the whole vibe of my new university like city.

It’s weird because someone very recently was carrying this pack of ironies in their pocket and now its mucking up a spot on the ground.

I do not know what role the cartoon ‘Captain Planet’ had on my decision-making that day, but I felt this urge to pick it up and throw it away. Then came the flood of excuses. What started as a simple observation of a situation turned into a full blown moral dilemma as I started to tell myself “I am in a hurry,” and “stuff on the ground is dirty,” and “this is not Oklahoma so who cares.” I mean of course it’s someone else’s fault. And I’m sure someone somewhere pays taxes so that somebody earning minimum wage is supposed to pick it up. They just missed it and will probably get it tomorrow. The issue with all my excuses is that they do not negate the reality that I am now morally responsible for no other reason than that I have seen the problem. Before you look down upon my confession you might ask yourself when was the last time you saw trash in a beautiful place and you bent over to pick it up without hesitation or complaint? We almost have to drag ourselves kicking and screaming to do good if somebody is not watching. The ground is a really long distance away from your hands after all. It’s a crazy amount of work I know, but do you take the seconds out of your day? The truth is that everyone wants to enjoy the garden but nobody wants to tend it. We all want to be tourists with no long-term commitment to what we leave behind.

Everybody wants the fruit but nobody wants the work. You want the scenery without a job.

So you now find yourself in a moral dilemma.

Here is something even more. If you make the chivalrous move to actually forsake your lazy bones and make the “sacrifice” to pick up the stuff polluting your habitat… Does a sense of pride swell up in you because it’s somehow ‘your’ town? ‘your’ State? ‘your’ Country? Think flags, facebook, and eagles for a moment. You might point out that I am just a product of the anti-litter commercials, but I would argue that none love to “mess with Texas” more than me. In the moment I pick the garbage up and feel a pride of country swell in my chest, I have in that moment missed the vastly more grand reality. That all this is G-d’s, not mine. When I do it so people will think well of me, the poison of self-righteousness begins to sink slowly into my heart. When I pick up the trash for the sake of a flag and not the Father then it still is really about me isn’t it? I just spread the pride around to others and switched from the first person singular pronoun to the first person plural pronoun. Either way it’s still about me first. It’s a subtle substitute but I’m still putting myself in the spotlight of both scenarios. I’m not arguing there is not a positive feeling that happens.

I mean, if people didn’t feel the euphoric inflation from good works then godless humanitarianism wouldn’t exist. We all want to dig wells and sign petitions for reasons that are about us more than them. Sin is pleasurable for a season, but the end thereof leads to death. Even sins that others applaud.

One of my most treasured revelations in life has been how much of a different animal it is when it’s from Him and for Him. The power is from outside us and its glory is for one outside us. It is not about us. It has never been about us. I wish I could just say it over and over again, so that I might make it plain Who it really IS about. We are just along for the joy ride homies. Doing something by/for/because/in the love of G-d is infinitely different than bending over to pick up a piece of trash looking around to see if anybody noticed.

When our heart is stunned by the truth that the earth and everything in it is the Lords we begin dancing to a different beat. We begin doing strange things for strange reasons by the worlds reckoning. We pick up the trash because we love to see His creation in a fuller glory than it currently is. We tend the garden because it’s our Dads and we treasure what’s His.

We want as many people as possible to join us in enjoying Him through it. Creation declares the glory of the Lord if you hadn’t heard. It’s something we should let preach. It never fears saying “amen” to our gospel preaching either. It waits and groans for us to get a clue.

I think this is no different a reason we tend the garden of marriage. It is a beautiful picture that I litter with my baggage all the time. No matter what man does to mar the gospel image of marriage, it does nothing to make it any less worthy of redemption. This is why we fight for healthy gospel community. Church may be a dirty word in need of shinning up, not throwing out. It may be easier to find safer, more convenient company, but there are things our soul will miss out on if we do. It is my belief that it is a beautiful thing worth fighting for even if it’s an uphill battle. It’s why we labor. Some will find many a weed in their marriage or home and see this as an excuse to walk away instead of dig in. This is absolute folly. It is like coming to Paris and seeing another mans trash as an excuse to burn the city to the ground. Friend, you will find weeds in the congregation of Christians and think it strange only because you are not used to task of gardening. This is the not the only work that is out there, but it’s the only work worth doing when you look back on it 10,000 years from now.

Whether its pulling weeds out of the heart of my Muslim neighbor so that the soil might be readied to receive the Gospel seed better tomorrow than it was today or its repenting to my wife in front of my kids when I mess up… this is humbling endeavor that He powers with grace and distinguishes as the only work worth doing for Colby Corsaut.

So here we are standing before packs of cigarettes wrongly placed before us with one really good excuse to play our part. There are things right now in need of your protection. There are things in this world in need of your elbow grease. There is a Kingdom to build. When you see Jesus for who He is and what He is about, these dusty images will become opportunities and not excuses. There are just too many lives that can be changed through these beautiful pictures to cast them aside so easily don’t you think? There’s too much fruit THAT ground can produce for us to be leaving it abandoned and untouched by the sweat of our brow. There are cigarette butts distracting people from the flowers. We got heavy rocks to get out of the way of glorious fruit.

We got trash to remove from a creation dying to show off Jesus.