March 12, 2009

Stop and Listen

Read: Luke 10:38-42

Our lives seem to have become busier and busier. Everyone has more to do than the next person. We tend to become focused on tasks. Everything is a goal that must be completed.

While accompanying a group of youth to the 1993 Virginia Workcamp, I was shown by the youth that although the goal is important, sometimes the things observed and learned while attaining that goal are much more so.

Our project was to glaze the windows and paint the house of an elderly gentleman who lived in a small rural town.

I was focused! I attacked the windows vigorously after assigning each youth to a paint brush and a side of the house. The gentleman sat in a bottomless webbed folding chair and observed the people working around him. During our lunch break, the youth asked if they could walk the two blocks to the town square. "Sure", I said, as I continued to glaze windows.

The youth returned carrying a brand new folding webbed rocking chair!

While I had been so focused on accomplishing my task, they had worked around the gentleman, listening to his tales of working on a horse farm during the early part of this century. They listened and interacted with this wonderful man. He talked of his family, now all gone, his faith, his work, and what he takes pleasure in now that he was 92. He enjoys sitting on his porch in his chair, visiting with all who stop by. He can see the field of the horse farm that he worked at all his life from his porch. The reason his chair was so worn and not replaced was not for lack of funds. He was physically unable to go to the store and buy one.

While the youth were painting they were ministering. They received much more from this gentleman than they were giving, just by taking the time to listen.

Prayer:
Dear Lord, we pray during this season of Lent we can all take the time to remove our blinders and see the world and the people around us. Amen.

Lynn Van de Putte (from March 2, 1999)