Robb Schiller

I told you I was work­ing on a story called “the old man and the young boy” but that was just a joke.  No, not a joke but that story didn’t want to wig­gle its way out.  So I fin­ished up a story I’d started ear­lier in June for a teach­ing Cole did at sta­tus on Sun­day night.

It was an awe­some teach­ing and you can lis­ten to it through the sta­tus pod­cast on itunes.

A Small Fraction.

The sweet, sweet aroma of God’s glo­ri­ous gift to man.  Cof­fee. With­out a doubt the com­fort drug of my pre-rest-of-the-day life.  This morn­ing in par­tic­u­lar I remem­ber really try­ing to savor the fla­vor.  I sat at the kitchen counter think­ing about the day ahead and the toils it could pos­si­bly give rise to, this Tues­day I would be spend­ing the morn­ing and after­noon vol­un­teer­ing at a local thrift shop down­town.  I had been once before but was for the most part entirely unaware of the expe­ri­ence this day would cre­ate.  Con­tin­u­ing to sip my cof­fee I started think­ing about all the other things I could be doing with my day.  Friends, the lake, the beach, the sun, every­thing sounded bet­ter than what I had planned.  Already dis­cour­aged, I left home for the thrift shop, ready for what God wanted to do.

Every thrift shop is pretty much the same.  They even smell the same.  Some­how 80’s Levi’s, 5k shirts and wood framed TV’s with 12 knobs on them always match up to the same scent.  And it’s not even a bad one; in fact the smell really matches the feel of the entire room.  Its high, naked ceil­ings and grey cin­der block walls.  Evok­ing this eerie feel­ing of being so far away from the head­shot glam­our of our miller high-life’d civ­i­liza­tion, a breath of unusual fresh air.  All this mixed with the smiles of the staff and the shop­pers; I got set off with some seri­ous zest.

We received our direc­tions of “Orga­nize” and I quickly found my-self Dewey dec­i­mal sys­tem­atiz­ing the 8-foot high pile of books in the cor­ner fur­thest from any other life form.  Why did I choose to pick the most dif­fi­cult sys­tem of orga­ni­za­tion in the entire shop? I really couldn’t tell you.  But what I can tell you is that after 3 hours and it not look­ing like a sin­gle thing had been done I was ready to leave.  Or at least just get away.  The insignif­i­cancy of this place, of my life in that moment was just blow­ing my mind.  So I decided to find some­thing as oppo­site books as pos­si­ble. Pants.  I moved into the clothes sec­tion of the shop and found a rack of pants with a beau­ti­ful sys­tem – Pant size indi­ca­tor rings, how nice.  Ready for some­thing easy I got to work.

“Do you have any 46’s?” The sweet­est lit­tle old lady you could ever see in your life asked me in a mum­bled, slow and under­stand­ing tone.

“What’s that?” I replied in my best efforts to be hos­pitably com­fort­ing. I had hardly talked to any­one yet that morn­ing and my com­mu­ni­ca­tion brain-waves had been defected by insur­mount­able prob­lems of organization.

“Do you have any pant’s that have a 46 waist?” Again she asked with such con­cern and desire it caught me quite off guard. Quickly I pointed out the 44-pant size indi­ca­tor ring and told her to check the line hop­ing that some 46’s would be around.  All the pants were so tightly squeezed into the lit­tle rack it was very dif­fi­cult for the size to be found amidst khaki, trouser, denim and slack.

“Yes, I was look­ing over there honey and can’t seem to find any with a 46, see my brother is in town and he hasn’t been to church in… well quite some time now and I was hop­ing to get him some new slacks so he could go, its just I can’t find the 46”

Out of nowhere this zeal­ous fire rose up inside me to Clark Kent this prob­lem.  It was some­thing to do with actu­ally talk­ing to some­one and get­ting smashed in the face with the real­iza­tion — I believe the church is the hope of the world, if this guys goes… Holy Jesus Fire! His life could be changed forever.

“Yes! Oh absolutely we will get you some 46’s” I responded and started going trough pant sizes on all the dress slacks faster than a Hobie cat in a hur­ri­cane.  3, 6 15 pants later and no 46’s.  Some­where along the search­ing I real­ized none of this rack was in any order.  28’s in the 36 sec­tion and 34’s in the 44 sec­tion.  Both­ered by the dif­fi­culty of find­ing any 46’s I mut­tered “Mam, I’m so sorry but I can’t seem to find any, I’ll keep look­ing and come find you if there are any here” Again, this lit­tle defeat sent my heart tum­bling and I was quickly dis­cour­aged at my own pur­pose of even vol­un­teer­ing to try and improve such a un-fixable prob­lem of pant rack orga­ni­za­tion, let alone mr. Dewey dec­i­mal over in the corner.

I wasn’t ever able to find a pair of 46’s but leav­ing the thrift shop that after­noon I was struck by the beauty of what took place.  So sel­dom do we see what the small lit­tle act of kind­ness is really hav­ing an impact on.  So sel­dom do I see the sig­nif­i­cance for the king­dom of what seems more than insignif­i­cant.  As I drove home I was amazed at the real­iza­tion, noth­ing, not a sin­gle thing escapes the honor of being a moment God has ordained, that Heaven can come to Earth.