For Christmas, my family and I went home to South Louisiana. It’s a 16-hour drive, so as you can imagine, we made lots of pit-stops along the way. As we traveled, I noticed something about public restrooms: many of them were in rough shape–lots of dirty fixtures, and lots of them were out of toilet paper, soap, and paper towels. I thought to myself, “Funny…I guess nobody wants to clean public restrooms. I can’t blame them, it’s such a gross and thankless job!”
There’s a guy named Steve Sjogren who spent an entire year of his life cleaning public restrooms. He called it a “Conspiracy of Kindness”, and even wrote a book about the subject with that same title. Sjogren would go into a public place, with cleaning supplies in hand, and ask, “Can I clean your restroom?” Sjogren said that people would look at him very strangely (as you can imagine), and most of the time they would say something like, “Go ahead-knock yourself out!”
Steve Sjogren said that almost every time he did such a random act of kindness, people would ask, “Why on earth are your doing this?” Sjogren would reply, “Because I want to serve you, and tell you about the love of Christ, who was the ultimate servant.” Man…that’s intense! Can you imagine cleaning those nasty toilets? I can’t. The thought of it just completely grosses me out!
2010 is here. My prayer this year is, “Lord, may I become less, while you and others become more.” I want to take my servanthood up a notch. Or, as Ed Young Jr. says, “A whole nutha level!” Who knows, maybe I’ll even clean a few toilets…guess I should start with the ones at my house first!
How about you? Is 2010 going to be about everything that you desire? Or, are you willing to start making life more about others? Are you willing to clean a few public restrooms? Or, will you just gripe about other people not doing their job?
Think about it.
-Danny