Remove the Rubbish: A New Year’s Resolution

The cheetah is the fastest animal on earth. It literally reaches speeds of 70 MPH. But it has a problem; it can’t sustain that speed for long. That’s because of its disproportionately small heart. If it doesn’t catch its prey in the first burst of speed, it will abandon the chase.

Many people take the cheetah approach to life. They enter into marriage, parenting, careers, friendships, even faith and the church with great energy and exhilaration. What happens, however, is that they lack the heart to sustain the effort necessary to the end.

When the children of Israel were rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem, it says halfway through the effort they became discouraged and were ready to quit. The reason: too much rubbish.

“The people in Judah said, ‘The strength of the laborers is giving out, and there is so much rubble that we cannot rebuild the wall.’” (Nehemiah 4:10)

When the Babylonians defeated Jerusalem they tore down the wall so no one would ever be able to build or defend the city. And so they had a huge trash heap to deal with, and half way through the project, when they looked at the pile of rubbish, in their eyes it really hadn’t diminished one bit.

We have a similar rubbish problem today. We begin with great expectations, but after a while the problems and difficulties seem to be more than when we started. And if we don’t remove the rubbish and get down to the foundation stone of life, then the walls of our lives will come tumbling down.

This rubbish represents things like unrealistic expectations, hatred, jealousy, bitterness, deceit, and pride, to name a few. And whatever we build on top of these will eventually fall. So what’s needed is a thorough cleaning.

Such a cleaning only comes through confession and repentance. So this New Year let’s resolve not to work harder, but rather to start cleaning up the rubbish in our lives.