Try as I might, I can’t always resist the overwhelming urge to comment on strange things I read in the newspaper or hear on the news. There are certainly plenty to choose from and you have no idea how many of those urges I do resist, but there’s a clipping on my desk begging for comment and I must give in.
As you may have read or heard, London has a problem with its sewer system. Specifically, a 143-ton problem they’ve dubbed the “fatberg”—an iceberg-sized blob of oil, fat, old diapers, baby wipes, and other nastiness that is clogging up the Victorian-era pipes.
This monstrous hunk of yuck is nearly as long as three football fields and weighs about as much as seven school buses full of high school students, or maybe about four or five of those iconic British double-decker buses. Picture those buses morphing into 143 tons of compressed sewage and there you have it—the fatberg that’s clogging the loos of London.
That’s the gross side of the story, and now here’s the quirky part: if the fatberg can ever be successfully dislodged, the Museum of London wants a piece to put on display. Wait … what? With all of the beautiful and meaningful items available in this world, they want to display sewage? I assume they hope to make a statement about the repercussions of irresponsible flushing, but I’m guessing it probably won’t be a fan favorite at the museum.
My more pressing question, however, is for Thames Water, the utility company responsible for maintaining the sewer system. Why, Thames Water, did you let that fatberg get so doggone huge? Why didn’t you deal with it when it was merely the size of a Volkswagen Beetle instead of allowing it to grow into a 143-ton, seven-bus superchunk?
But on second thought, I probably already know the answer to that question. I suspect it’s the same reason most of us don’t deal with our own “fatbergs” when they’re small—the “fatbergs” in our hearts. Not made of oil, fat, old diapers, and baby wipes, but of emotional sewage like bitterness, resentment, anger, worry, revenge, jealousy, greed, selfishness, hate, and guilt.
We live in a fallen world where we sin and are sinned against. Dealing with the fallout from that that can be difficult, messy and uncomfortable, but it’s worth the effort because faulty coping mechanisms can leave some mighty toxic stuff in our emotional drainpipes—stuff that can stop up our hearts like those London sewers.
As I was working on this column, the news broke about the horrific shooting in Las Vegas. It’s hard to comprehend how and why people do some of the unspeakably evil things they do, but as a popular song says, “People never crumble in a day … it’s a slow fade.” The backstories of people who stray, betray, wound and kill are typically dotted with many issues and sins that were never dealt with in a healthy way.
That’s why God says, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Prov. 4:23).
Thankfully, God also tells us how to do that—how to keep our hearts clean and flowing with the love, peace, joy and hope He offers: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
When we’re tempted to “stuff the stuff” we need to process as we go through our lives, we should stop and think about that London fatberg and take heed. That’s what could happen to our hearts, but thanks to Jesus, it doesn’t have to.
“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” – Psalm 51:10