In 2017, a new day was added to the National Day Calendar lineup that falls on today. The third Saturday of September has been designated as National Cleanup Day. I’m embarrassed to admit it but as soon as I saw that, a song popped in my mind.
Clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere.
Clean up, clean up, everybody do your share.
In the 90s when our children were little, a popular purple dinosaur named Barney pranced and bounced across our television screens singing this little ditty. This was to encourage Baby Bop and her friends to help with the household chores and cleaning up the toys at the end of the day.
The emphasis behind today has nothing to do with Barney or any of his friends. It’s simply a day to volunteer our help in cleaning parks, ditches, trails, beaches, and more. Sadly, we have a lot of people who have no trouble dumping their trash, dropping stuff on the ground wherever they may be.
How many of you were brought up with the understanding that if you see something that needs to be picked up and thrown away, you should do it? None of that “but it’s not mine” nonsense. Just pick it up and throw it away.
To be honest, one day a year is not sufficient to clean up the trash people leave behind! Take a walk sometime through the Imagination Station or any of the parks in our city. You will find a variety of items littering the area: bottles, lids, napkins, candy wrappers, banana peels, apple cores, cigarette butts, diapers, and a whole lot more. There are even things too graphic to mention that are left behind.
There is no way our Parks and Rec Department can handle all the cleanup every day plus do all their other work. That’s where the citizens must take initiative and do some cleanup when enjoying the parks and playing with their children and grandchildren. Think of it as exercise or doing toe-touches. Every time you bend over to pick up some litter, you expend calories and work on your glutes, abdominal, and leg muscles.
The Jews had their own version of Cleanup Day. 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 says, “Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? (7) Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: (8) Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
The Believer’s Bible Commentary sheds some light on the practice mentioned in this passage. “In thinking about the unleavened bread, Paul’s mind goes back to the Passover Feast where, on the eve of the first day of the Feast, the Jew was required to remove all leaven from his house. He went to the kneading trough and scraped it clean. He scrubbed the place where the leaven was kept till not a trace remained. He searched the house with a lamp to make sure that none had been overlooked. Then he lifted up his hands to God and said, “Oh God, I have cast out all the leaven from my house, and if there is any leaven that I do not know of, with all my heart I cast it out too.”1
Passover happened once every year. There were other times that the Jews were
admonished to deal with sin but Passover was a key time in their lives.
Leaven was used as a symbol for sin. Our lives are to be kept free from the contamination of sin. Since Jesus is our Passover, this isn’t something we celebrate once a year. We celebrate this every moment of every day. Therefore, the leaven of sin must be cleaned up from our lives all the time.
Allow the lamp of God’s Word to illuminate the dark crevices of our life. When that crumb of leaven is found, sweep it out by confessing and forsaking it. Let God do that work in you today.
“Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: (24) And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalms 139:23-24)
1Believer’s Bible Commentary, e-Sword.net module.
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