Goodbye Playground

The boys heading to the old playground; the playground as of noon today.

This morning (after a long, sleepless night where Nils was up until around 2am, but that's another rant), the boys and I walked to the park next to our apartment to watch the big trucks tearing down the play equipment.

My information only comes through others in the neighborhood, but the rumor is that the city replaces playgrounds every 10 years (which, though ambitious in my mind, is good that there's an upgrade plan in place). The sad things is that they just demolish the old playground equipment. Sure, there was a little wear in places (again, the rumor is that there were some rusty bolts), but it really didn't need to be wrecked. I know a lot of smaller communities and county parks that would have been thrilled to have the equipment that our park had.

Now, I'm sure the city will recycle the scrap metal and plastics, but the destruction seemed kind of pointless. Just another instance of our throw-away mentality in this world. It was quite noticeable when I was in Ecuador several years ago. Traveling through the mountains, you would see a stream of garbage flowing down the hillsides beneath homes. As North American packaging of products found its way to the small mountain villages & homes, the people didn't know what to do with the wrappers, boxes, etc. So it just got tossed out in hopes it would go away. The worst part is that we've learned to do that to people, too.

I need to start looking at the value of everything and everyone around me--including myself. God created it all, He will redeem it all, and He died for us all. And that's where our value lies.

Meanwhile, we'll be waiting for the new playground to be installed.