"Do you have any dessert?" Howard asked me after supper last night. I at first said no, then I remembered a ripe peach we had in the crisper. I told him I could make a peach shortcake if he wanted, remembering some baking mix I had in the kitchen. He liked the idea, and soon I was mixing a couple of shortcake biscuits.
In the middle of that, the phone rang, and I carried on a long conversation with my daughter-in-law whom I hadn't seen in several days. Getting back to the kitchen, I was distractedly following along with the shortcake recipe on the box, when I realized I had followed the directions for pancakes! I knew I had never put egg in shortcake before!
Earlier that day I had remarked to the stylist while getting my nails done, "Well, school starts this week!" She and the girl next to her looked puzzled, finally convincing me it is next week. "I should keep current on these things, since I will be keeping my granddaughters after school," I laughed. My wrong assumptions made me think of something that happened at church Sunday.
To back up, a couple of years ago when our pastors were absent for an extended period during their recuperation from an automobile accident, one of the ladies made personalized chair-back covers for their customary seats. The pastor's was marked in large, embroidered letters, "Reserved for Mr. Gibson." I puzzled over that until someone explained he was nicknamed that for his fondness of his Gibson guitar. The seat where his wife always sat had a cover that read, "Reserved for Sister Clara." Sadly, we lost our dear pastor's wife nearly 6 months ago, but the seat cover is still there.
"Why are you sitting back there?" I smiled to a friend behind me who usually sat next to the reserved chair on our row. Her daughter was with her and she answered, "She didn't want to sit in Clara's chair." A newcomer next to me overheard and looked puzzled, and I saw her whispering to the lady next to her.
Realizing her confusion, I later explained about the reserved chairs. "I wondered!" she said, "I heard no one wanted to sit in Clara's chair, then I saw where the pastor was sitting, and thought, well, he's sitting in Mr. Gibson's chair!" The situation provided a bit of comic relief in a poignant moment but made me realize we shouldn't assume strangers would understand the gesture!
Even Jesus's parents made a wrong assumption once that cost them three days of anxiety. They had each assumed that their 12-year-old was in the group that was returning home after the Feast of Passover. Some say that since Jesus had technically reached manhood by the beginning of his 13th year, Mary probably thought he was with his father. Joseph, on the other hand, may have assumed their young boy was still with his mother.
Nevertheless, it turned out to be a teachable moment for the couple when Jesus was found "about his Father's business." We can learn a lesson, too, by not taking it for granted that everyone we meet knows about Jesus. We may assume a person is saved and fail to present the gospel to them. We,too, should be about our Father's business. There is no mistake about that!
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