The Box on the Curb

For years now our church has been running a tag sale to raise money for our youth program. Every year we receive calls to pick up furniture and other big items from people who are in what we would call today “life transitions”, whereas my mother would say, “they are moving”. On one of these adventures I got into a conversation with Jim Guinee who was reflecting on an experience he had with an old man bringing out boxes of personal items from his home to place on the curb for the sanitation department to pick them up. Jim noticed that the box was filled with some interesting things like trophies and fishing gear. When he asked the old man about the trophies, he replied: “They belong to my wife who was a champion swimmer.” The fishing gear was from the time when he used to take his son to Alaska every year to fish. The old man told Jim he was throwing these things out because he was moving into an assisted-living facility, but he invited Jim to help himself and take whatever he wanted out of the box. Jim said he felt like he was violating someone’s life as he reached down for some fishing items.

So, it all comes to a box on the curb after all those years of living and those great memories. Perhaps this is the end for all of us – a box on the curb. We usually end up in a box, with someone throwing dirt over us. However, the thought did come to me that many of us are living in a box right now; a box that could be labeled “Routine”, or “Depression”, or “Illness”, or just a box we call “Life” that somehow has lost its luster, its interest, its joy, and its wonder. Easter speaks of resurrection, an invitation to think outside the box, and outside the grave as well, only because life doesn’t have to be a box on the curb.