Friday, August 28, 2009

A Fresh Start

I've always had an affinity for shopping carts.

Growing up, my brother and I stole (I mean found) a beat up shopping cart and kept it in our backyard behind our plywood fortress/tree house (part of which can be seen in the photo behind the kid about to do something stupid with a pointy stick). We turned it into an "attack cart" and added slight modifications that made it much more dangerous than it already was. Dangerous to us that is. I won't divulge what we did to it (to keep less creative youths from major bodily harm) but I will say that it involved fire.

*sigh* those were the days.

Anyways, I did the unthinkable this past Wednesday morning.

I braved the crowds and went to the grand opening of Martin’s Supermarket a few minutes after it opened. Part of me was curious, part of me was greedy for goodies, and part of me actually believed that I might win something. I didn’t win anything, but I did get a free reusable grocery bag and a small bag of free ice cream parlor flavored jelly bellies. But, I am getting ahead of myself …

I found a parking space way back near the gas station and readied myself. Grabbing a cart, I entered the sprawling store.

That’s when it happened … or rather, that’s when it DIDN’T happen.

You know what I’m talking about. You grab a cart and it waits 30 seconds before announcing what its quirks are. It may pull sideways. Or, one of the wheels might squeak horribly. I’ve had carts at stores that had a wheel that had a flat spot so you’d go THUMP, THUMP, THUMP all the way through the store. Or (my favorite) a wheel just sticks at inopportune moments and you feel like you’re trying to hold onto a bucking bronco at a rodeo. Or, some twisted combination of these.

The worst part is feeling guilty for immediately exchanging the cart knowing that you’re sticking it to someone else. Then again, the next cart you get might be in even worse shape…

Well anyways, I started pushing this cart and my muscle memory kicks in. Subconsciously, my body tenses as I enter the doorway; waiting for the inevitable screech of plastic against metal, or violent shift as the cart decides to veer away towards something breakable. But nothing happens. The cart glides like a Mercedes on new asphalt.

It takes a moment for my body to register this and to tell my fingers to release their death grip on the handle. This is what a brand-spanking new cart feels like. This is what a cart is supposed to feel like.

And I am now hopelessly spoiled …

However, instead of dwelling on how carts should be and on why I can’t seem to find “perfect” carts, I am thankful that I got a little taste of shopping cart heaven. While I don’t think there are shopping carts in heaven, it wouldn't surprise me if hell was full of them (well, where ELSE do bad carts go?).

What is it about new experiences or new ways of doing things that gets us excited? Sometimes all that you need to do is slap some fresh paint on your walls to change how the room feels like. A piece of furniture or two (or twelve). Some lamps. A table. A change is great if it heralds a new beginning. A new way of looking at things.

A new way of being.

The River is preparing itself for a big change (for us) this fall. The Sunday following our next community coffeehouse (Friday October 16th) We’ll be shifting our worship gathering to Sunday mornings at 11am. With this new schedule, more people who have connected to us through our small groups and communities will be able to gather together to honor God as a faith community. We’ve been given the green light to repaint the interior of the white house, and we look forward to making it a more comfortable and appealing place for all the groups who meet there. The church is about people, and this will give us a better opportunity to gather together as we walk this journey called life.

Luke 5:33-39
One day some people said to Jesus, “John the Baptist’s disciples fast and pray regularly, and so do the disciples of the Pharisees. Why are your disciples always eating and drinking?”

Jesus responded, “Do wedding guests fast while celebrating with the groom? Of course not. But someday the groom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.”

Then Jesus gave them this illustration: “No one tears a piece of cloth from a new garment and uses it to patch an old garment. For then the new garment would be ruined, and the new patch wouldn’t even match the old garment.

“And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. For the new wine would burst the wineskins, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine must be stored in new wineskins. But no one who drinks the old wine seems to want the new wine. ‘The old is just fine,’ they say.”

Questions to Ponder
Why do we like the old wine?
What must change?
What must continue to grow and expand?
What needs a new coat of paint?
What needs to be torn down and built up again?
How can we continue to focus on relationships? Touching the lives of friends and neighbors that God has blessed us with?


Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

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