You May Need Some Extra Napkins

“You can’t sit there.”  That’s what the lady in the restaurant told us when we came in out of the 112 degree heat and sat at the table closest to the air conditioning vent.  It happened to be a large table and there were only two of us.  “This table is for large groups,” she informed us. 

We would have been happy to give up the table if a large group needed it.  We’re not hard to please.  We were just really, really hot and since there was only one a/c vent AND since it was the time of day that the dinner crowd should have been at its peak AND since there was not another customer in the room AND since it was a buffet and we would have been out of there in less than 30 minutes, we figured we were safe.  “You need to move,” was her answer.

So we did. To the restaurant down the street.

A week later we were driving through the same little town again.  We saw a classic looking drive-in with a drive-through and swung in for a burger.  The lady at the window offered a suggestion on their most popular entrée (the BBQ Bun) and told us how they chopped their meat, removed all the fat, and covered it with the sauce from the same recipe her grandmother used when she opened the place in 1971.  Grandmother retired a few years back and now Dad owns the place.  She was so obviously proud of her family’s heritage in this little business and did everything she could to make our visit pleasant, including putting in lots of napkins because of their generosity with that tasty sauce.  Besides the fact that it was just the BBQ sandwich I had been craving, her attitude and enthusiasm made it a meal and a place to remember.  The next time I am driving through that town at a meal time, I know where I’m stopping.

My purpose here is not to criticize the first place.  The lady there was just working within the system of their establishment.  She was probably doing just what she had been told to do.  The lady at the second place was probably doing the same.  They just had a different system.  You can draw your own conclusions about which system is better.

We all have our systems.  We have them at work, at church, at home. What do our systems say about who we really are?  Do our systems highlight the reality that people matter to God?

1 Corinthians 13:13 in the Message translation gives a “system” for living well.  “Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.”

Our lives matter so much to God that He wants us to love extravagantly, not live efficiently, as a picture of His extravagant love for us.

So live with extravagant, messy love today.  And throw in some extra napkins.