Hands up if you remember Hurricane Sally? What stories do you have of that terrible storm in September 2020? Angry Sally is the most recent hurricane to directly hit Alabama’s coast. She caused five to seven feet of storm surge and between 20 and 30 inches of rain.
Sally has now gone to the place where hurricanes go to die, but her effects are still being felt. And not just in Alabama. The other day, over five years after the visit of Sally, something weird happened - 4,000 miles away in the fair seaside town of Weymouth, England. In her rage, Sally threw many things around South Alabama, including trash bins. And so it was that a man named Ryan, strolling along Weymouth beach one morning last month, discovered a trash bin with “Baldwin County, Alabama” printed on the side.
Ryan got in touch with Baldwin County Solid Waste, who were able to use a partial serial number on the bin to and determine that it used to belong to one of three houses in Fort Morgan.
That garbage container made a historic swim. It bobbled along the Gulf coast from one beach town to another, then headed south and lolled around in those warm waters for years. Ryan knows this because the bin had attracted some goose barnacles, which are native to the Caribbean. They don’t survive for very long in the colder waters of the north Atlantic. Then, tired of swimming in the tropics, it made its mad, marathon voyage across the ocean to sleepy Weymouth.
The good folks of Weymouth (and American tourists seeking a gentle beach vacation in England’s South-West), can see the Fort Morgan bin. It’s now housed in a local pub that displays flotsam and jetsam that the Gulf Stream has deposited on the shore.
Sometimes things get lost at sea. Sometimes they’re garbage. You think it’s gone and you’ll never have to see it again. Then one day, maybe five years later, that ugly piece of trash washes up on your shore and you must reckon with it.
It’s Lent, the season of reckoning with rubbish. If God brings to mind some ancient piece of waste that you thought was no longer in your life, then maybe it is time to deal with it once and for all. Don’t try to deny it, ignore it, or kid yourself that it will go away again on its own. Christ died for our trash. On the cross he dealt with it. He filled a sack with your garbage and mine and took it with him to the place of execution.
May this Lent be rich and fruitful for you, may you surrender the rubbish and receive a clean, new start from God.