Think God doesn’t care about the trash in our lives? Think again.

Today was the second day we woke up in La Mesa, in the condo that will be our home for at least a few months. Eiley (my wife) just returned from taking Grace (our dog) for a walk, came to me and said, “I just dropped the keys down the trash chute.” The only keys we have to get into the condo, along with the security fob. Now, I know some homes have laundry chutes and I expect some have trash chutes; but we’re in a condo. On the third floor. With two levels of parking below. It’s our second day. Saturday. I don’t even know where the trash goes, other than down. Or who to talk to to find out. But down I go, in my dumpster-diving shorts and shoes, in search of trash and keys. 

The trash area is easy enough to find, on the first parking level, public parking for the stores below us. Behind locked doors. But God provided two appropriately-attired trash men walking from their trash truck parked just outside the garage entrance, toward those locked doors! (I actually think they were angels, a la Abraham’s visitors; see Genesis 18.) When I told them what happened, they just said, “Seriously?!” “Yes,” I replied. They opened the secure trash area to reveal two large, barely-filled dumpsters, and there were our keys – right on top of a bag, below the trash chute exit. One of the guys even climbed in to retrieve them for me. (“He does it all the time!” said the other.)

If Eiley had dropped the keys five minutes earlier, or if I’d gone down five minutes later, then we wouldn’t have found them. (Or, I suppose, God may have orchestrated some other ending to the story!) So, you think God doesn’t care about the trash in our lives? Think he doesn’t have humorous side to him? Think again!