The Boss of a factory prided himself in the heavy demands he
made on his employees, and their ability to meet those demands. So he was less than pleased when, one day
while walking through his factory, he noticed a young man leaning against a
stack of boxes doing nothing. The areas
Foreman wasn’t around, and apparently the man thought he could get away with a
little unsupervised relaxation. The Boss
watched in quiet irritation as the idle employee yawned, checked his watch,
scratched his head, kicked at some dirt, and finally sat on the floor.
This was more than the Boss could take. He strode up to the young man and shouted,
“You! How much do you make a week?” The young man replied $250.00. The Boss swooped into the cashier’s office,
took $250.00 from the cash box, returned, and threw it at the young man. “Take it and get out!” he demanded. The young man took the money, and left
without so much of a glimmer of shame crossing his face. “We don’t need the likes of him working
here,” thought the Boss to himself.
Then he tracked down the Foreman. “You know that lazy bum in
front of your office,” he said. “I just
gave him a week’s pay and fired him.
What’s the matter with you, letting him get away with such unproductive
behavior?”
“You mean the kid in the red shirt?” asked the Foreman.
“Yeah! The kid in the red shirt!”
“He was waiting for the twenty dollars we owed him for
lunch,” the Foreman said. “He works for
the coffee shop around the corner.”
We may think we’re good at reading people, but it’s quite
easy to make mistakes, and quite easy to get people wrong. In 1931 Charlie Chaplin entered a “Charles
Chaplin Look-Alike Competition” in Monte Carlo. He only came in third. Apparently the judges weren’t quite the
“Charlie Chaplin Experts” they thought they were. And sometimes we’re not the judge of
character we think we are.
This is why snap judgments and first impressions, as
essential as they sometimes are, can be misleading. And this is also why I am appreciative of the
two free meals we’ve done as a congregation.
Those two meals have given me an opportunity to meet people I never
would have met, and get to know some folk a little better then I otherwise
would have known them. The meals have
opened doors into the community, not just for me, but also for our congregation.
When I see people of Maple Avenue working together to make
these meals happen, when I see how generously this congregation has supported
the program with donations, when I see people, in spite of their honest
concerns, giving the ministry the benefit of the doubt, and when I see people
from Maple Avenue actually sitting at tables with others from Daycare and the
neighborhood, actually chatting and getting to know them, then I’m filled with
a strong sense of pride. I do think we
have a terrific congregation, and I just wanted to let you know what I think.
So a word of thanks to all who made donations and worked to
make this happen. And a “thank you” to
those who helped. And a thanks to those
who came, ate, and mingled. This is much better than relying on snap judgements. We're
really getting to know others, expanding the walls of our ministry, and carrying the
light of Christ into the world.
Thanks for being part of this.
In God’s peace;
David
