Wooden Benches

We live in a rowhouse with a small front yard that would really be more accurately described as a small patch of green between the house and the sidewalk. Yard sounds too big. We’re thankful for it, though, and the opportunity to have a few plants in view as we look out the kitchen window. At some point we decided to buy a wooden bench to put under the windowsill: we thought it would look nice but also be a good spot for sitting outside, reading, having a cup of coffee, etc. Like a porch. 

I wish I could tell you that we often sit on that bench and drink our coffee or read a book as we imagined we might, but alas, that would be a falsehood. Not surprisingly, Belgian weather does not always lend itself to sitting outside, but lest it appear that I’m blaming the whole thing on the weather, I admit that we just don’t regularly grab a book and keys and walk out our front door and that of the building itself (our rowhouse is divided into three units) to sit outside on the bench. 

But it has been used in some ways that we did not expect. COVID’s arrival brought a few months of total lockdown, meaning, among other things, that we could not invite anyone into our home. I had multiple good conversations with dear friends, sometimes bundled up in our coats, sitting out on that bench. The lockdown months with the kids home also brought the need for structured exercise time; we would go outside to get some physical activity, and those who finished their exercise early could sit on the bench and wait for the others to come home. This last year also saw the health of our upstairs neighbor decline, and it has brought me joy to see him sitting on the bench for a rest either before or after the long flight of stairs on his way in or out. 

I’m not about to draw any spiritual conclusions from the act of placing a bench in front of our house, not in and of itself anyway. But it strikes me that there could be some encouragement hidden in how the usefulness of the bench has manifested itself. Sometimes in life we do something with an idea of the effect it might have or the good it might do, but then the Lord surprises us with how He actually uses it. Maybe it’s in various conversations you’ve tried to have with a friend or family member or in persistent attempts to forge a relationship with a coworker that the Lord surprises you with what He takes and makes effective. Or maybe it’s in parenting, when you think your efforts to be faithful are proving fruitless, when you see one potentially deep conversation after another fall short of success in your eyes – maybe it’s there that the Lord amazes you with what He’s been doing under the surface. 

The Lord calls us to be faithful, but He doesn’t charge us with the results or offer us a sneak-peek of them. He wants us to obey, yes, but in humility as we trust Him to do the work. The idea of “being faithful” could be described in a variety of ways, but today, I’ll use the image of benches. He calls us to continue putting out benches and then to wait upon Him to see how He puts them to use and whom He brings to sit in them.