Lessons from a Dish Pit

08 Jun Lessons from a Dish Pit

ReadMatthew 9:35-38

Thought for the Day: Jesus has compassion for the lost and asks us to pray!

The summer before I went off to college, I was hired to bus tables at a busy restaurant. For the first month, things went according to plan: I showed up, worked my hours, clocked out, collected my tips, and went home. As soon as I got comfortable in my new routine, it was the 4th of July, the restaurant was extremely, and both our dishwashers had spontaneously ended their employment.  (The second was so frustrated after the first left that he quit as well.) Chaos quickly ensued.

For the first few minutes, I repeatedly brought full buckets of dishes to the pit until it overflowed. After some initial chaos, the back-of-house manager came out of his office and realized what had happened. Seeing confusion and disorder, he didn’t get mad. Instead, he looked at me and said, “Congratulations, you have been promoted to the dish pit. It pays more.” For the rest of the evening, I worked without stopping. By the end of the night, I was exhausted, but had learned a valuable lesson: when someone comes in to solve chaos with a plan, it is time to get busy.

It is easy to see the chaos and division in our society and do one of two things. We either ignore it (like I did before my manager set me straight) or get mad (like the second dishwasher after the first left). Jesus offers us a better way: He has compassion for the lost, realizing that they are simply “helpless, like sheep without a shepherd”. So where does that leave us? Scripture is clear: we must pray for those whose lives are like lost sheep. Jesus has compassion for the people in our society who are lost, but He needs laborers. On that July 4, I was asked to start washing dishes. In our lives today, we are asked to pray for all who struggle!

In Christ,
Pastor David (and Stan)