Today I went to work for 4 hours, and it felt like a full work-day. It was hard! I went to register 15 and worked, and then, they pulled me off to go to be a people-greeter at the GM door. I did that. Then after Robert came and took over, I went to the Podium. I was standing at register 15 near the podium speaking with these two women, and the manager came and asked why no one was working and I said, 'I just came back from GM door and the CSMs haven't told me to do any work.' And then she turned to the girl I was speaking spiritual things with and she said because of her asthma she couldn't go and so I told her that I'd go and I went. And after a long time, maybe an hour and a half, of pushing and assembling carts in the sun, I finished the grocery side cart door with these two guys. And I went in and said I'd do the other side of they wanted; I just did this because Jesus said if your enemy has something against you, give him your cloak.

And as I was out pushing carts into the GM side, Assistant Manager Nigel came by and saw me, gave me the weird look, and told me to take out a trash can that was right near where I was. This was no simple task. The trashcan was filled with beer bottles, beer, urine, and sewage smell, and when I went to put a bag over it, black water came out. This wasn't just garbage-juice. It was sewage - Robert told me the bottom was filled with sand and so it would be impossible for me to lift, and it was filled with nasty trash and rain water. And Robert tried to lift it, but the trash was infested with maggots and he was afraid they'd eat at his hands and burrow under his skin. So he told me to get two other peoples from Maintenance to come and help me carry it to the back. We did, in a cart, and when we dumped it in the compactor, it was so filled with mold spores and nasty bacteria and black water and sewage, and the smell was so vile, pungent, and excorriating to the senses that we just pushed the whole trash can into the compactor and agreed that it couldn't be done another way, and compacted it. It was disgusting. The trash was so vile and nasty.

The Lord showed me something today. I was in Hebrews and I learned that the Lord disciplined His Son, God in the flesh, in the Garden at Gethsemane that day. He disciplined Him for obedience (Hebrews 5:8). Jesus, He who was without sin, was disciplined for obedience being by definition Obedience. Why'd God do that? It makes sense because He has to and wants to do it for us, and Jesus being the author of our faith, suffered God's discipline to be made a better high priest, that could be touched in all points in our sufferings and being made perfect through suffering. It's like this, if God sees Jesus as most pleasing in His sight - perfect, undefiled, and sinless, never doing anything wrong and always doing what pleases the Father, and lead Him away to a bloody death by crucifixion and let Him bear the weight of my sin on the cross, and then let Him die spiritually on that cross, as well as physically, with His beard ripped from His face... How do you think He sees my sin? If Jesus' obedience was pleasing to God, and my sin is displeasing, and yet God did that to His only Son, what do you think I deserve, or you deserve, for those 'little white sins'? Death.

So deserving death, in hell, God's grace in the new covenant of Jesus Christ... I am already under God's mercy and grace, and forbearance. He's imputed my punishment on the cross in Christ, and I die daily a living sacrifice to God. So what I suffered that day at Wal-Mart isn't anything sort of like a punishment - this isn't a place of punishment, it's a place of discipline for God's beloved (those born-again, already), and a place of obedience to the voice of God. Every one He receives, He purges, that it might produce more fruit. He is a consuming fire. The refining fire of His discipline is put to my devotional life, my faith, to purify it and purge it - so it can produce more fruit! I grow in holiness. So I didn't deserve that disgusting trash can - I deserve death! It wasn't a punishment or a torment - it was a discipline, and what discipline I receive, I receive out of grace! No discipline feels good, but the Lord has to do it. He has to do what a Father does to those He receives as children. He's adopted me, afterall.

I took a shower after all.