It's Thursday!

This morning, I forgot it was Thursday. The days of the week have been all mixed up because of President's day. Monday was a Saturday, Tuesday was a Monday, Wednesday was a Tuesday, and I'm not even sure what I think today is, but I wasn't expecting a Thursday this soon.

Thursdays are important to our family. A long time ago, the garbage trucks would take our trash on Fridays, so when Mom came home on Thursday evenings, she'd notice all the garbage bins lined up on the streets, and she'd remind my brothers and I what day it was. Then we would all shout, "It's Thursday!" and we'd run around the house, collecting garbage, and rolling the bins out to the street. But while I was on my mission, they changed the garbage schedule. Now the garbage trucks come on Thursday mornings, so the call of "It's Thursday!" comes earlier in the day, and with more urgency.

It's strange that taking out the trash will be one of the joyful memories of my youth.

There's a parable in this somewhere. "Taking out the trash," could very easily be an analogy for repentance. In the olden days of Garbage on Fridays, the bins on the street might be analogous to prophets, warning us to "Repent, for the day draweth nigh!" But these days, we hardly get that warning anymore, even though we still have prophets. Well, I do pass though areas with garbage bins on my way to school on Wednesdays. Maybe that's my 'prophetic warning.' That's an upsetting analogy, because I usually just bike on by without thinking about them. Well, I think about them, but my thoughts are usually, "These garbage bins are in my way." I hope we don't think that way about prophets and commandments.

We live in the Last Days. If "The End [was] Near!" several years ago, it's certainly nearer now. Now, the garbage trucks come on Thursdays, and we need to be ready for them a day early. It's also said that "the day or the hour no man knoweth," so the day may come on a Thursday or a Friday, or a Monday or a Sunday for all we know. All that we know about the Day of the Lord is what we've been commanded to do to prepare for it; Take Out the Trash.

We all have garbage in our lives. For some, it may be a bad habit, for some, unworthy thoughts, only you and God know what's in your life that needs to be taken out. (Well, okay, Satan knows, too, but that's because he had a hand in putting it there.) Anyhow, I have no idea what trash needs to be taken out of your life, but I know what trash needs to be taken out of mine.

The Savior will be coming soon, either to take our burdensome trash off our hands, or to shake His head sadly at those of us who are still holding onto ours. And we don't know how soon He'll come. It's time for us to throw our garbage into the garbage bins, roll it out to the street, and give it to the Lord. He wants to take it off our hands and out of our lives forever.

And while we're at it, I may throw in a parable for recycling as well.

In our neighborhood, the garbage and recycling trucks come on the same day. The recyclables are taken to a recycling center where useful things can be made out of them. So while we're taking all the garbage out of our lives, perhaps we should keep an eye out for useful things, too: Talents, Virtues, Christ-like Attributes, and offer those to the Lord as well. They may not seem like much to us: old newspapers, milk jugs, and tin and aluminum cans, but let's put them in the Lord's hands and see what He can do with them. The positive things in our lives may be more useful than we think.

The only other thing that's taken on Thursdays is yard waste, but I can't think of an analogy for that. Not off the top of my head. We almost never have yard waste to take out anyway.

Jesus wants to take the garbage out of our lives and put our recyclables to good use, but to do either of those things, He needs us to act first. We need to sort out the garbage and recycling and offer them both to Him. Only then can He take our garbage away from us and turn the rest of us into something good. And for our own sakes, if no one else's, we had better do it soon. We don't want to be caught off-guard when the garbage trucks of eternity come.