A Clean Heart

“A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast spirit renew within me.” Psalm 51:12

If anyone can create a clean heart for us, only the Lord can. We see all around us signs of a fallen world. God has given us so much. He surrounded us with beauty. But what did we do? Our oceans are filled with plastics and debris. It is heartbreaking to see penguins on top of a mountain of trash and turtles deformed from being caught in a plastic 6-pack ring. Instead of rejoicing in human life, people make laws to allow murdering almost fully formed babies in the womb. More than 300 priests are caught abusing more than 1000 children. How ugly can the world get?

It is useless pointing a finger at the priests or those who legislate for abortion or those who throw garbage on the streets and rivers. There are always three fingers pointing back at us. There, but for the grace of God, go I. God never gives up on us, and neither should we give up on ourselves or our fellowmen. We need only repent, and ask for the grace to do better. 

When Boyan Slat was 16 years old, he was diving in Greece and he saw more plastic floating in the water than fish. Since then, this aerospace engineering graduate has devoted most of his time to thinking up a way to clean up the ocean. This year, he and his organisation is set to launch his clean-up contraption in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest offshore accumulation of plastic. It is larger than TWICE the size of France. They hope to clean up half of the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic in 5 years. Isn’t it so admirable that he didn’t just shrug his shoulders and leave the problem for others to think about? 

Boyan said, “The plastic pollution problem has always been portrayed as something insolvable. The story has always been ‘OK, we can’t clean it up - the best we can do is not make it worse’. To me that’s a very uninspiring message. What I really hope is that the ocean clean-up in this century can be a symbol for us using technology to make things better.”

All of us have a part to play to clean up our corner of the world. Let’s ask God to create in us a clean heart, and join with others willing to make a difference.