Junk In the Back Yard
Laila and I took our seven grandchildren to my childhood home---the community of my maternal kin. There are several country roads that converge upon the only main road passing through the community. Once upon a time the intersection hosted a general store, service station, hotel, post office, school, churches, etc.
Time passed. Walmart came to town about 9 miles away. Food Lion and a shopping center not far from Walmart.
The post office is now a small mobile trailer. The general store is closed---as is the service station. The school building I attended stands, but students now go to a educational complex near the city. You can pass through the intersection these days at 55 MPH. Not much to slow down for.
The hotel is still there. For sale. I was with a cousin. We called to ask the price…just for fun…$800,000, they said! I suggested to my cousin he put up the money, and we buy it. I would get my brother to run it and my sister to cook. I would go back to Virginia. We had a good laugh.
Truth is that the old hotel is a grand building. Dignity. Once a B @ B. It stands stately on a corner reminding folks of times past when important folks with money enjoyed gracious southern hospitality and food. Rich folks used to spend time in that hotel.
There is a fly in the soup. Behind the stately building---just across a dirt road---a family lives in squalor. It is dirty and junky. Trash piled up. Animals of various descriptions scratching around in the dirt. No grass. Not the kind of view that folks sitting on the veranda looking at a sunset want to see.
My hunch is that it will be a long time before $800,000 is paid by a purchaser.
Shepherd boy David had been anointed to be king. Then he found himself running for his life with a motley crew of misfits. He wanted to do honorably, but a wealthy landowner by the name of Nabal really made him angry. Like so many folks David was about to transfer anger for life situations and vent it on one person. David had murder in his heart. Nabal was going to die.
Abigail was Nabal’s wife. She came to David and said (paraphrased): “You are a good person. God has good plans for you. You will be king. Don’t put trash in the backyard of the palace you will live in.”True story. A pastor called me to talk about how to handle a delicate situation with one of his elders who was CEO of a very reputable company. A junior executive was transferred to the local offices. The CEO invited the junior executive and his wife to come to a welcome barbecue at the CEO’s home. When the junior executive arrived with his wife the CEO realized that she had been a part of his promiscuous high school life.
It was a difficult evening. The junior executive’s wife left the evening and shared with the wives of other executives about her high school fling with the CEO. She told them she had been to bed with the boss. The CEO found himself with junk in the backyard ---trying to manage the corporate office and be an elder in the local church.
Remember, My Friend, that grand ole hotel may look good on the front, but if the backyard is full of trash and stinking from sins of the past value can be lowered. Keep yourself unspotted. Joseph in Genesis is a fine example.
Pastor Bare
James 1:27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself UNSPOTTED from the world.