From the Anger of My Shallow Depth

“Howdy, Preacher!”

I thought I recognized the voice, turned and yup, it was Bill.

He was a regular at the church where I’d been the pastor about three months.  He always had a smile to go with his firm handshake.  Seemed supportive in administrative meetings.  A solid, nice guy about 30 years older than me.

I was the new hot shot pastor in town.  Taking over the church from yet another in a long series of student pastors.  And worse, I thought, they’d only been college students.  I was a newly-minted seminary graduate, full of answers and full of myself.

And now here we were in the business district of the town.  I was walking to the noontime Rotary Club, wearing a new suit and tie, ready to impress any and all.

And there was Bill, hanging out of the window of his banged up pick up, the back end filled with bales of hay.

“Preacher!  Preacher!”  Louder.  He was persistent.

I was insulted.  He was pigeon-holing me, and how dare he do that, especially in public like this?

I stopped walking.  Pointed at him and yelled back, with as much of an insulting tone as I could summon from my angry prideful impressive shallow depth, “Well, howdy, yourself, Farmer!”

He laughed, waved, and drove on.

Then I realized the most obvious of my mistakes in those brief seconds.   Bill wasn’t trying to harass me or box me in with an archaic  job description.  He was doing what no Bishop could do; the Bishop could only appoint me to the church…the church would have to be the ones to let me be their Preacher.

Bill had blessed me with that title.  And I had missed it.  Or maybe worse, I had misunderstood and despised it.

I fumbled an apology his direction the following Sunday at the church door after worship.  He laughed and hugged me.

Bill taught me volumes during my time as his pastor, and — oops!  Correction: during my time as his Preacher.

Learn from my stupidity.  Today, this week, whenever someone fires something good your way, be gracious.  Don’t dodge or deflect what’s intended to be a gift.  That starts with being thankful for the people in your life.

It’s all part of a lesson I’m still learning.  How about you?