OUR
DUMPSTER-DIVING GOD

Topics: Advent; Christmas; God’s Love; Grace; Help; Human Worth; Incarnation; Jesus Christ

References: Luke 2:6–7; 15:11–24; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 2:17

I love ribs, so when I heard about a restaurant that had amazing ribs, a bunch of my friends and I drove fifty minutes to get there. The place was packed, and the food was great. It was “all-you-can-eat rib night,” and rib bones were piling up as fast as the line to get in.

Eating ribs is messy business. Barbecue sauce gets on your face, fingers, and clothes. Dirty napkins pile up next to half-eaten bowls of baked beans and coleslaw. When our crew had eaten all we could, we paid our tab and waddled out to the car.

I reached into my pocket for my keys and came up with nothing but lint. Panicking, I looked through the window at the ignition. I hoped that I had locked my keys in the car, because in the back of my mind a more disgusting possibility was taking shape. When I saw that the ignition was empty, I knew exactly where my keys were—to my car, my house, and my office. Only seconds earlier, those precious keys had slid off my tray and followed a half-eaten corncob and many bones to the bottom of a trash can. I had thrown away my keys on all-you-can-eat rib night.

My friends weren’t going to do the dirty work for me. So I dove into the dumpster, fishing through bones, beans, barbecue, corn, cake, coleslaw, and a host of saliva-soaked napkins. A shiny layer of trash can slime coated my arms before I finally grabbed those precious keys.

As I meditate on the incarnation this Christmas season, I think about our dumpster-diving God. I mean no disrespect by calling him that. On the contrary, I have a soaring adoration for the infinite God who left a pristine, sinless heaven to search through the filth and rubbish of this fallen world for something precious to him—me.

—David Slagle, Decatur, Georgia