Several years ago, in another life-time and another planet, I got a phone call rather early in the morning.  On the other end was the custodian, who often cleaned the church prior to going to his day job.  He called to say, “there is a problem, you better come over here.”  When I got there what I discovered was some panels of the dropped ceiling laying on the floor.  The mess was made when two raccoons fell through the ceiling and were now in the building.   With great skill (yeah right!) we got them out the front door, relieved they did not make any more of a mess. 

This past Monday morning, I received a phone call from our custodian, not so early, but earlier than my body wanted to be up, and he said “we have a problem.”  The problem was that someone burglarized the building.  They broke a window in the choir room – came in through there and broke into the church office.  At that point they rummaged through every desk and every drawer.  Two of the desks were damaged such that we will need to replace them.  The safe had been pried open (now they were determined as this was not easy task!) and broke into our administrative assistant’s office.  They took an unknown amount of money.  They did avoid the pastor’s office though as they knew it was an extremely holy place – in reality probably figured there was nothing they were after in there.  The whole experience has been more of an inconvenience than anything – though it does leave one feeling violated. 

We can say thank you to the person(s) though because they did not vandalize our building with graffiti  nor destroy items needlessly.  They did not make more of a mess then they could have.  They did not set the place on fire.   We as staff kept saying we were so thankful for that.   So, the week started out in a very unique way; thank goodness it doesn’t start this way each week.   We are glad that even in the church, God’s mission station, we have found ways to laugh in the midst of one of the messes of life. 

Till next week…H