An unforgettable Experience
Last Saturday I had to help some friends clear up a pile of old junk from the Parish Centre. We loaded the whole lot onto a lorry and took off for the dump yard.
It was an unforgettable experience.
I had never been up there before. It took us ten minutes to drive up to the top of the man-made hill of rubbish, rubble, refuse and whatnot... When we got there and alighted from the cabin, I was flabbergasted! Literally I was left breathless. The stench was so awful, so overpowering that I was endeavouring not to breathe. When I, inevitably, succumbed to the need for air, the odour I inhaled almost knocked me unconscious.
The whole scene was one of utter devastation. Just as if I found myself amidst the ruins of a city after a tremendous earthquake. All around me for as far as my eyes could see were heaps of rubbish, junk, rubble... lorries and refuse trucks were all over the place tipping off their unwanted loads. To top all this, two gigantic bulldozers were to-ing and fro-ing all around us clearing and leveling wide areas, pressing down the moulds and pushing them to the very ends of the waste tip.
The whole scene recalled minding an excerpt from Dante’s “Inferno”.
At any rate, we started on the work, as swiftly as we could possibly make it, of unloading the lorry and dumping our junk wherever we could toss it. All I had in mind was to make as quick a getaway as I could. Just in the middle of this operation, I grabbed an old window frame and took a dozen steps forward to throw it clear of the pile that we had built up all around us. Just as I flung it, my eyes caught sight of an unexpected scene. Right in front of me about two hundred feet down, was the most beautiful scene I had set my eyes upon for ages. There, in front of me was a lush green valley, bedecked with the brown of freshly tilled fields. The sun was making the most spectacular colour scheme on the beauty in front of me, the sky suddenly appeared vivid blue, and on the horizon I could make out the blue inviting sea.
For a moment I could hardly believe that I actually was in the middle of that gruesome rubbish dump. I had to force myself to look over my shoulders to realise that it really was not a dream. It was unbelievable. Over my shoulders was a scene of complete desolation, and a few steps forward had taken me up to the most enchanting of views.
We finished our work, scrambled back into the lorry and drove down… as fast as we could. On the way down, I was silent. I was reflecting upon that curious, unexpected episode.
I was thinking that the whole area of desolation I had just seen reflected my own reality in life; the desolation resulting from my sins: pride, egoism, envy, anger, resentment… but it only took me a few paces in the right direction to enable me to get a totally different outlook on my situation. It is a fact, which God only asks me to take just a small step in His direction, along His Way, and my outlook changes drastically… whatever the surrounding situation would be!
It is amazing that in life we should choose to remain transfixed in a situation of utter desolation, when simply by taking a step in the right direction we could free ourselves from whatever is pulling us down, whatever is causing so much pain, anxiety, gloom in our lives…
The choice is ours… God leaves us completely free to do whatever we like… to choose whichever way we like… |
