Lesson from a Church Auction

This Saturday is our church yard sale to raise funds to help our sister church in Turkey buy land for a building. Church yard sales tend to remind me of something that happened our first year or two in the ministry.

The tradition in the Mount Airy, Maryland area, where Prospect United Methodist Church is located, was to have auctions rather than yard sales. At an entry-level pastor’s salary, we were very limited in what we could buy even at church auction prices. But that evening, after everyone had gone home, Paula and I walked across the street from the parsonage to look around at what had been left behind for the trash collector.

That’s when Paula saw the bed frame , and old wooden headboard and footboard and side rails. It was in such poor shape that nobody was willing to pay fifty cents and carry it away. I agreed with them. But Paula saw something in it that I couldn’t see. She kept exclaiming about how beautiful it was. So, just to humor her, I carried it across the street to the parsonage.

Paula went to work with stripper and scraper and stain and polyurethane, and she created a wonderful transformation in that old bed. She scraped away the layers of dirt and grime and peeling finish, and brought out what that bed was originally created to be. And just as she said, it was beautiful. Nuances of texture and grain and color just shone.

We really didn’t have room for another bed in the parsonage, so the next time we visited Paula’s parents on their farm in Missouri we put it on top our old station wagon and took it out there. Her folks loved it, and every time we visited for the next decade or so, that’s the bed we slept in. Then when they moved to the city, we brought the bed back and now Joy sleeps in it. It’s still comfortable, and it’s still beautiful. I’m so glad Paula was able to see beyond the damage of years to see what it could become.

And I’m so glad God sees beyond the damage of years to see what we can become. When our mistakes and bad decisions and downright sins have covered us with layers of gunk and grime and we feel like we’re not worth fifty cents, God still sees something in us. He wants to pick us up off the trash heap of life and clean us up and refinish us and make us beautiful and useful. The only difference between us and that old bed is that once Paula decided, the bed didn’t have any choice. We do. But I’ll tell you what: let God have his way with you. Standing strong and beautiful in a nice bedroom is so much nicer than rotting in the county landfill.