By Brad Campbell –

Just a thought to help start your week.

Nineteen years.  That’s how long ago I wrote and sent my first emailed weekly thought.  Many of you are instantly amazed that I’ve even had that many thoughts of any kind!  But seriously, at times through the years, I’ve been asked this question – “Do you write out something and then find a picture to go along with it?”  The answer is that no, I do the opposite.  I settle on a picture and then just start typing.

So, as I was scrolling back through hundreds of photos on my phone, I ran across this one.  Granted it’s a stock photo, a screen shot that I took while roaming around the internet a while back.  With the exception of its color, this stool is exactly like one that my mother’s parents had in their home as long as I can remember.  There were fourteen of us grandkids on that side, not to mention the spouses and kids of the older ones.  It was a rare privilege for any one of us to get to sit at the “big table.”  But sometimes, when maybe there were only a handful of us visiting, we would gather ’round that dining table, which I love to tell others now sits in my own home, and the smallest of us would get to sit on the stool.  We might perch up on the top, or when the seat was raised, sit on one of the lower steps.

I don’t know who in the family wound up with that old stool.  I’ve longingly looked at some like it in various antique or junk stores through the years.  But it isn’t even about the stool.  It’s about the memories associated with it.

For that stool, to me, represents times gone by.  It is a symbol of simpler days – maybe not for our parents, but for us as we grew up.  It represents being initiated into the wonderful sit-at-the-big-table crowd, listening to the grownup conversations, even if we didn’t contribute.  It reminds me of the countless meals that were spread upon that table, the cold fried chicken, bacon, and biscuits that we kids would reach up under the tablecloth that had been thrown over it all and sneak some of.  That stool is a reminder of times, places, and people I have loved and held very dear.  I would like to find a stool like it.  I want to sit on that seat again.

I am so very blessed to be a part of a loving, Bible-believing and teaching, church FAMILY.  Granted, I’m the pastor, so I see the gathered crowd from a different angle than most, but I stand in front of those pews, those seats, and I remember the faces of so very many dear Saints of God that have long passed to their eternal reward.  A twinge of sadness arrives for but a very brief moment, but then I’m reminded of those same things the old stool reminds me of – – times, places, and people that I have loved and held very dear.

If you haven’t been to church lately, if you haven’t sat upon an old church pew (or even a newer more comfortable seat that has replaced those pews), if you haven’t been where those who raised us worshiped together themselves, then may I urge you this very week to go looking for your seat?  There’s something about those special seats that bring the world together, remind you of Who and what matters most, and puts everything into perspective again.

Time is precious.  Please take your seat at the table.  Oh what glorious conversations await.

Just a thought.