Friday

Love Where You Are

Do you know how you can tell that it is mission trip season?

Yes, I am making appearances in Wal-Mart again. This morning, I woke up to rain on my skylights. So I drug myself out of bed and put on my rainboots and happy face and waited for Troy to get home from prayer group. Off we went to the land of (theoretical) lower prices.

We gathered band-aids and water balloons and icing and sugar cookies and Dixie Cups and all manner of various sundry items needed to feed teens and have a VBS for little ones when we travel.

At one point, I put on Facebook that I seemed to have lost my husband in the Wal-Marts on a rainy mornin'... I was the beginning of a bad country song.

We finally got ready to check out but had to wait for the guy with the money. Some story about helping people or maybe the soccer game was really exciting... I dunno, it took a while.

If nothing else, there is plenty-o-people watching to be done in a Wal-Mart, ya know? So we people watched and were entertained, but one guy really caught my attention. He was a Wal-Mart employee. He was cleaning the floors. He had a little cart full of tools -- broom, dust pan, mop, and the most clever contraption EVER!

He stopped to get a scuff mark up. He reached in his cart, gave it a squirt with a squirt bottle. Put the squirt bottle back. Reached in the cart again, drug out a broom handle that had a tennis ball stuck on it and used the tennis ball to scrub the scuff mark. It worked! Drug back out the squirt bottle, squirt! Then mopped heartily and happily.

I'm not kidding about the happily part. Imagine if your job were to clean the floors at Wal-Mart. How would you approach that? This guy was humming LOUDLY. He was so darn happy to have his floor cleaning job. What a great lesson in life. It was a rainy morning. All of us were going to be creating more work for him. Maybe he was extra happy to be using that tennis ball rig of his. Whatever the case, he was happy as he could be.

I'll try to remember that guy next week when I'm on my mission trip scraping paint, standing in mud, or better yet, standing in line at Wal-Mart again.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
Colossians 3:23, 24

6 comments:

dad said...

Wonderful lesson, well taught!

Jae said...

Amen and amen!

Stephanie said...

Today I really need that Bible verse.

And that Walmart guy must have told the floor cleaner guys up here about his tennis ball trick. I've seen the floor scuff mark erasers used by equally (inexplicably?) happy Walmart employees up here too :)

Barbara said...

The custodians at my school used tennis balls to get up scuffs, when I was still teaching -- less happily than that guy was cleaning, I'm sure.

Anonymous said...

He was blooming where he was planted. . .and giving us a good lesson in scuff removal while at it. On Wed. morning as I ran through a McDonald's to get a diet coke in Texarkana before I left for the other half of my trip, I saw two vans with teens/tweens milling about. Looked like there were mission headed as well. Be safe. Love you.

Anonymous said...

Great post, Sarah! That verse is one of my favorites and will be my classroom theme verse this year. I need to hear it frequently and I'm sure a few 5th and 6th graders will, as well! :)

Paula