[This blog is getting ancient--twenty years old and more, thousands of posts, most of which can quietly slide into oblivion with no particular sadness or pain. But once in a while I go back a ways and hunt around for something lively, like this one from 2012. I'd just retired. I have no memory of where I was, but I remember the mammoth picnic table that earned, to my mind, a few words.]
I suppose one of the sentences I'm
serving in my life is being forced to look at picnic tables. I've lifted
more than my share, painted dozens, even repaired 'em by the lot; so many that
when I sit at one, I can't help look. And yesterday, here's what I couldn't
help seeing.
When I walked out of church, it felt like early June in Omaha--had to be 60.
The congregation was going to have lunch together and then do some caroling.
Imagine Christmas caroling in weather so warm you really should be
playing church-league softball. But I couldn't stay, so I got in the car
and started steering north and homeward.
I grabbed a Philly Cheese Steak sandwich at Arby's--big mistake because it was
too darn big--then decided I was retired and there was no reason to chase home
on such gorgeous day, perfect for most anything but caroling. So, sandwich and
curly fries in hand, I pulled over at a rest stop and took the closest picnic
table. Everything tastes better outside, we used to say at the state park where
I worked, even too much Philly cheese steak.
That's when I noticed the heavy chain beneath the table. See it?.
Incredible. You have to notice, first off, that nobody ever has to repaint this
mammoth. The top is that unforgiving hard rubber stuff, and the base is
honest-to-goodness concrete. Nobody ever repairs this thing either.
And it's chained down--that's right, chained down, presumably because otherwise
some petty thief idiot would walk off with it. I can understand people
wanting one of these heavy suckers in their backyard--it'll last forever!--but
I could not begin to imagine how on earth some deviant yokel could grab one,
then hoist it on the bed of a pickup without some huge wench and a world-class
hernia.
Seriously, someone's going to steal this table?
What kind of world do we live in anyway?
We all suffer for the damned. Starts in third grade, when some kid rips
up a library book and the rest of us lose our recess until the creep 'fesses
up. Thus we strip at airports and let some unsavory stranger have a look at our
private selves in an x-ray lest some fanatic Islamicist tries to light up
his Nikes.
Made me sad, honestly, this human condition. Some crew has to put chains
on what must be a couple of hundred state-owned, ten-ton picnic tables because out and about on the land there's a highway robber who'd
otherwise grab one of these and take it home? Oh, geez. Woe and woe
and woe.
It was a gorgeous day. Thank goodness for global warming. But there
I sat, stuffing my face and, on account of a heavy metal chain, lamenting the
human condition. And I'd just come from church too. What I should have
done is turned around, gone back, and done some good old-fashioned holiday
caroling.
Instead, I sat there angry, finishing that cheesy-mess of a sandwich--and the
curly fries, all of 'em.
Woe and woe and woe. Sometimes, Lord, I think I got a chain on me.
1 comment:
Wow. You really got worked up over a chained metal picnic table :). Imagine everyday seeing overdosed homeless people on the street or in your neighborhood, or, observing a deadbeat dad who won’t meet with his estranged son who desperately wants his love, or, witnessing young men who are bereft of social skills and basic life skills because their parents never had time for them, and other things I and others in metro areas have seen and continue to see almost every day. Like you, my initial reaction when observing these things is righteous anger which eventually morphs (sometimes slowly and reluctantly) into the pity and compassion of Christ. Though a Neo-Calvinist by inheritance and conviction, Mother Theresa has taught me much - a woman who regularly asks us to look for the Saviour who willingly suffers with the poor and oppressed. Such a request allows us to look beyond the picnic table chains to people in need of freedom from pilfering and more serious things that keep them enslaved. What opportunities we have to minister Christ to the world! In the meantime, we look forward to a better place and better time. Maranatha. Come Lord Jesus.
Thanks for resurrecting and sharing this piece from 2012. Your writing regularly invites reflection that is sometimes painful and other times liberating.
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