One Year Bible: October 20

In the same way, the good deeds of some people are obvious. And the good deeds done in secret will someday come to light.

1 Timothy 5:25

To read today’s portion of scripture, you can purchase The One Year Bible or find the following in your Bible:

Jeremiah 35:1-36:32
1 Timothy 5:1-25
Psalm 89:14-37

It’s a big job to move a church. It requires a lot of boxes, a lot of packing tape, a lot of trucks, and a lot of people like Sue.

Undoubtedly, the fun part of moving is seeing everything arrive in the new place. But Sue chose the harder part: staying behind at the old church cleaning and packing.

She told me later about how she had been dusting off all the fake plants in the sanctuary, and how she came upon one particularly dirty plant. The plants that had been around the pulpit had been tended more. But this plant, relegated to a back corner of the room, had collected a whole lot more dust and grease (where had the grease come from?!) than the others. As she looked through the tightly frilled leaves and saw how much work it would take to clean it, she was tempted to just toss it in the trash. No one would know; no one would miss it, she reasoned. But she didn’t. Instead, she took it to the kitchen and spent a good half-hour soaping and scrubbing. She said as all the grime disappeared and the plant began to shine, she was glad she hadn’t thrown it away.

When she told me that story the next day, we were standing together in the front of our new sanctuary, right after our first joyful service.

She hadn’t been involved in the placing of items at the new building. So everything was a surprise to her when she walked in for our first Sunday service. But nothing surprised her more than what she saw front and center at the base of the pulpit, where it had been placed in all its glory.

It was her plant.