Rubbish!

We took the girls for a walk this afternoon and ended up in our local park up in Grange Farm. As always, we were annoyed by the vast quantities of litter strewn over the path and the grass.

Finding an abandoned Budgens bag(!) I quickly filled it with litter, including drink bottles, sweet papers, sandwich boxes, chip wrappers and so on...

The only problem was what to do with it! - There is, of course, no bin near the park.

Although some of the litter had clearly come from Sams (the chip shop) I was convinced that most of it was Budgens' snack wrappings. It therefore seemed sensible to take it round to them - and they have a bin.

Unfortunately, my little bag wouldn't fit in the narrow slot. I debated whether I should offer it to the assistants but decided they had enough to cope with. In the end I left it on the bin.

I know I've only removed a few items of litter, but it did make the play park look a bit friendlier and less like a public tip. There's still plenty of rubbish up there if anyone else wants a go...

There used to be a poster showing a picture of someone dropping litter as they said, "This one won't make any difference."

The message of course was that each piece of litter dropped may not matter on its own, but combined with all the others produces a horrible mess.

Perhaps the same applies to picking litter up.

How many times do I walk past a piece of litter and think, "Should I pick it up?" and then fail to do so because one piece of litter wouldn't make any difference...

If we all did it, of course, there wouldn't be any left!

I am reminded of an experience I had a few years ago when I felt God calling me to pick up a piece of litter from the path. I picked it up and found myself praying for the people who had produced it, carried it, sold it and dumped it. One piece of litter becoming a moment of intercessory prayer...

I wonder if it would be good to try this again: pick it up and pray - one a day - or something like that. If I was an entrepreneurial evangelist, I'd start a campaign!