I just got back from an interesting trip to the Middle East that I would love to post more about soon. But for now I wanted to talk about an interesting and challenging Christian activity that is taking place within Egypt. The Zabbaleen are Coptic Christians that live within Egypt. There is only 60,000 of them or so and they are responsible for picking up 1/3 of Cairo’s trash. They take this trash and pick it up off the streets and then bring it with them back home. Their home is literally a landfill. Trash surrounds them.

It puts a whole new spin on the idiom, “one person’s trash is another man’s treasure.” The men go out into the city and pick up the trash and bring it home where their wives sort out the trash into plastics, glass, papers, etc… It is a very efficient recycling system. After they do this they make goods out of the trash and sell it.

At first as an American I can respond with disgust and anguish that these folks are living in a landfill. Can you imagine little kids that often put whatever they find in their mouth living in a landfill and putting whatever he can find in his mouth!!! Sometimes there is broken glass and used syringes!!!

However it has been once told to me that an observation of the phsyical condition of someone’s life is an example of someone’s spirtiual condition. In light of this, when we look at the lifestyle of these Christians I can impose an idea that quite possibly this is exactly the life that we are to life. We are to be those who go within the dirtiest and darkest of places and pick up waste, sort through it and redeem it. These families give me quite a picture of what we are to be like. In the midst of darkness we are to be light. In the midst of trash we are to be garbage collectors and redeem the usefulness of fallen and broken items. To look at the bad and find the good within it. For more information about the Zabbaleen you can read:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A23780270

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabaleen

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0106/p07s02-woaf.html