David and the Giant (Chair)

I had stopped to visit at the home of a family whose yard backs up against the church property. While chatting out in the side yard of the house with a visiting uncle I noticed activity taking place across the chain link fence. Near the back edge of the church parking lot someone was hauling a piece of furniture to the church dumpster for easy removal. Is that supposed to happen? Is the church’s jumbo trash bin there for this purpose? Can just anybody rid their home of unwanted junk and expect the church to deal with it?

After completing my conversation next door, I drove into the church parking lot through the back entrance. My arrival time overlapped the time it took our furniture hauler to complete his transition of the overly large stuffed chair from his pickup bed to the concrete pad beside the overly large green steel bin.

Imagine my amazement when I discovered that one of our own church family was the mystery man with plans to load up the church trash receptacle with worn living room equipment! What was David doing there? And what were the reasons for his actions?

David had spotted the lumpy monster at the front edge of the church property. Instead of leaving it out by the road in plain view for everyone to squint and scowl at, he had chosen to remove it to a more discrete location far removed from that more public vista. The bum whom I thought was dumping his trash on the church lot was actually the courteous fellow cleaning the place up.

David’s actions with that giant chair served well to remind me that not all is as it seems. And that not just in the negative. I am used to thinking of perceptions that turn out not to be as rosy as at first blush. Here I saw a situation that was far better than I had originally pictured.

Things are often not what they seem. Sometimes that is very, very good.

Tim Gramly
Education Pastor
South Haven Baptist Church
Nov. 17, 2009