Twenty Tons of Garbage [Tract]

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Shivering a little in the cool autumn evening, Fred had just ended his day shift and was now headed toward his alley corner. He never cared much about holding a good job, so he had to be content with the cheapest bed he could find. Tonight his bed turned out to be a large, brown garbage dumpster. Fred slept here quite often, and although it didn’t always smell very nice, he never once thought that it could be dangerous.

The next morning the garbage collector was earlier than usual on his pickup rounds. Fred was still sleeping soundly when the dumpster he was sleeping in was hoisted onto the front loader of a 21-ton garbage truck, turned upside down and dumped into the back of the truck. Falling about eight feet, Fred awoke for a moment and then was knocked unconscious as he hit the floor of the garbage truck. Seeing that the back of the truck was beginning to fill up, Brian, the garbage collector, turned on the compacting cylinder to make room for more garbage. With 21,000 pounds of pressure, the cylinder trapped the still-unconscious Fred in mountains of garbage in the back of the truck. Hurrying to get on with his rounds, Brian turned off the compactor before it had pushed the garbage all the way back and then hurried to his next stop. He would have been shocked to learn that he had just saved a man’s life.

Threading his way through the city streets, Brian made two more stops at dumpsters. Then his next stop was the bus station where he found two cans of water waiting to be thrown away. Brian dumped them into the truck along with everything else.

 Down in the truck, Fred was jerked back to consciousness by a cold shower of dirty water. Realizing where he was, he began banging on the floor of his “prison” and calling for help. He was trapped in almost twenty tons of garbage, and there was no way he could get out.

Probably most of us have never been trapped in garbage, but there is something far worse that we have all been trapped in – our sins! Most of us have committed enough sins to fill many dumpsters to overflowing. The Bible plainly states that “all have sinned” (Romans 3:23). But like Fred in his awful condition, it is impossible for any of us to escape from our sins by ourselves. Only the sinless Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, can rescue us out of our sin-prison. When Jesus went to the cross, God punished Him for the sins of every person who will admit that he is a sinner and believe that Jesus’ death on the cross was for his sins.

After making one more stop, Brian could see that he needed to finish compacting all the garbage. It was then that he heard somebody calling for help and looked around to see where the person might be. But the voice sounded so far away that Brian decided not to worry about it.

Climbing back into his truck, Brian realized that he could still hear the voice and it sounded more urgent. Switching off the compactor to be able to hear better, Brian was startled to hear banging coming from inside the truck. Because he didn’t know who or what was in his truck, Brian called a police officer to come before he opened the back of the truck. Imagine their surprise when Fred came climbing up out of the garbage!

Fred had been less than five seconds from certain death at the crushing end of the garbage compactor. Shaken by his narrow escape, Fred has never slept in a dumpster since.

If you realize that you are a sinner trapped in your sins, how long will you wait until you call to the Lord Jesus for rescue? Fred had a five-second escape from death, but not everyone does. The Lord Jesus wants to save you right now, if you will let Him. He promises that “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13), and He also says, “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:34).