Culture shock snuck up on me. I never experienced a "we aren't in Kansas anymore" moment. I've taken things as they come and have really just tried to see this new culture in a beautiful light of God's diversity. But trash is never beautiful.
Like many developing nations, Zambia does not have a strong recycling or trash collecting industry. Trash piles up on the sides of roads to be left, or it is thrown into pits to be buried or burned. Almost every day, if I’m driving on the main road, I will see someone throw a fast food bag of garbage out the window of a moving car. There is no sense of caring for God’s creation in regard to waste management.
In the U.S., I live in charming, lusciously green Oregon. Oregon is a state of tree-huggers, hippies, enviornmentalists, recylers, bicylists, and hikers. I grew up recycling and composting because that's just what we do. Littering in Oregon is a punishable offence with fines and even jail time being the result. Sure, Oregon isn't perfect. There is still trash in the streets in the cities and occasionally left at campsites, but it is nothing like I experience here in Zambia.
The littering and trash in Zambia hit me hard. I typically say "I die a little inside" when I see someone just throw their plastic soda bottle on the ground. There are so many beautiful things about Zambian culture that I really love. But no culture is perfect, and everywhere there are broken people with broken relationships.
Trash and the Gospel have more in common than you would think.
We just finished our series on Creation with our youth. Now, we are moving forward with talking about Creation Care and Stewardship. We talk often about four key relationships that have been broken because of sin: us with God, us with ourselves, us with others, and us with creation. The only way those relationships are redeemed and fixed is through Jesus and his death and resurrection. Jesus didn’t just die to save humanity, he died to save all of creation. When we throw trash on the ground, beat animals, cut down trees without replanting, or burn plastic, we are not being good stewards of God’s creation. This is almost a foreign concept for those we work alongside.
So, what do trash and Jesus have in common? Jesus came to take the trash out of our own lives. He came to save and refine us, and in that refining (sanctifying) he gave us a job: care for his creation. Adam was given work before sin entered the picture. Work in the form of caring for God’s garden. Where there is trash, there is opportunity to share the Gospel and to help people become the managers of what God has given.