This morning I visited the emporium of a well-known retailer of stationery products (they were also stationary due to the effects of inertia, friction and gravity). I am not endorsing them over any other retailers, but their name is a type of paper-fastening device.

(The fact that it was a stationery retailer is incidental to the incident. But I thought I would tell you for atmospherics.)

Back to the narrative. There were several cars in the car park outside the emporium of this well-known retailer of stationery products when I arrived so I parked in an available space. (Of course it would have been much more difficult to park in an occupied space!) I went inside, made my purchases of stationery products that I required, and came back outside.

Several of the cars that had occupied spaces had gone and in the space that had been occupied by one of them was a pile of paper and packaging that seemed to have been discarded from whatever items the driver / occupants of that car had purchased. They were just dumped there.

I was indignant. It was not as if there were no rubbish bins nearby. It was not as if the packaging was so toxic that the occupants of that car had to jettison it urgently and would have needed specialist handling equipment and protective clothing in order to deal with it.

It was sheer laziness on their part.

I felt righteously indignant.

I had my hands full of stationery purchases from said emporium so I could not pick up the litter and put it in the bin until I had deposited my goods in my own car. I opened a door, put my purchases on the back seat, closed the door, opened the door to the driver’s seat, got in and drove off.

So much for righteous indignation. It lasted as long as it took me to get to my car to forget about the litter and move on. It was only when I got home, put my purchases in the study and sat down to write this bloggage that I remembered the rubbish and how I had failed to deal with it myself.

It is easy for us to be (righteously) indignant about the behaviour of others but before we start judging and pointing fingers we need to be careful in how we examine ourselves.

I hope nobody noticed the plank in my eye!

Be blessed, be a blessing.