The King of the Dump

I recently switched from Directv to Spectrum.  I had a very old TV that is not compatible with Spectrum’s HDMI only cable boxes.  So I bought a new TV and took the old one to the dump.  You have to prove that you are a resident with your driver’s license and a copy of a recent water bill from the city to allowed to dump.  I brought my license and June’s water bill, the most recent one I could find. The King of the Dump raised Cain with me because of my ancient water bill.  Like I moved to Arkansas but was just dying to get over on him by dumping my TV in his dump. “Did you look at the date on this water bill before you came”, he asked.  “Do you know what ‘recent’ means?” I said, “Look, if it’s that big of a deal, I will go home and find the most current water bill.”  He then said, “I’ll let you dump today, but be more careful in the future.” I think he expected me to kiss his filthy boots at this display of grace.  

Bruce Springsteen has a line in a song called “Badlands” that goes like this, “Poor man want to be rich. Rich man want to be king, and a king ain’t satisfied till he rules everything.” We all want to be king of something. Then when we are king of that, we want to be king of something bigger.  This man was the king of the dump.  It was his prerogative to enforce the rules of the dump strictly, or to give grace.  He clearly enjoyed his kingdom.  I’m sure you all have had similar experiences. 

Why is it that we want a kingdom so badly?  I think it’s because we are so out of control in most areas of our lives that we desperately want to be in control of something.  We try to control our health by exercising and eating right, but we could get a bad diagnosis any day.  We try to control our financial security by investing wisely, but the bottom could fall out of the stock market or real estate market without warning.  We try to control what will happen to our assets after we die, but our kids might squander what we have worked hard to accumulate.  We try to control our relationships by treating people well, but find that we have somehow unwittingly offended someone and we can’t fix it.  We realize that we are not in control of anything. We long for something that we can control with complete and unadulterated authority.  

Jesus dismissed the idea that we are in control of anything. In Luke 12, in the great passage about controlling worry and anxiety said, “And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life’s span? If then you cannot do even a very little thing, why do you worry about other matters?”   We are not in control. God is sovereign and everything happens in accordance with His will and with His plans.  I thank God for that.  If we accept that God is good and God is omnipotent, then what do we have to fear? Most times in life, when I try to be king of my life, I get out ahead of God and I don’t learn the lesson that God has for me in the moment.  In doing that I miss the blessing He has for me and I make a dump out of my own life. 

I tell myself that I don’t want to be king of my life.  I tell myself that I want to be a faithful subject of the only true King.  But am I being honest?  The only way to be a faithful subject is to surrender my life to the true King and let him rule my life.   That means allowing Him to use me however He wants.  It means being thankful for suffering because of the lessons I learn from it.  Most of us try so hard to control our own lives, and then something happens that makes us realize that we never had control anyway.  God did not make me king of my life.  The more I try to be king, the more I usurp His authority and get in the way of the work He wants to do through me.  We have to surrender our lives to him daily.  People trying to lose weight start a new diet every morning. People who want to surrender their lives to God have do it every morning too.  I pray that we will all have the strength and wisdom through the power of the Holy Spirit to surrender to Him.  He’s a better King than we will ever be!