The Pile

I could see it as I opened the blinds in the bedroom.
I could see something odd beyond the end of our driveway.
It was our trash and recycling day.
I noticed that the trash truck had already come.

The trash is always picked up before 7:00 am.
I saw our large trashcan moved neatly to the side.
The recycling, along with some flattened boxes, had yet to be picked up.
Whatever I was seeing was not on our lawn but rather on the street.

I knew that I would see it better from the downstairs windows.
I knew that I would see it even better when I went on my walk.
From the downstairs window I could tell that it was a pile of something.
Went I went on my walk, I saw what was piled in the street.

It was a mound of rock salt.
The rock salt was mixed with sand.
I wondered how the pile got there.
It was closer to our neighbor’s side of the street.

I had not known that during the night the roads were a bit icy.
There had been a snow squall the day before.
It came up suddenly with white-out conditions.
The snow stopped almost as quickly as it started.

The squall left the grass, trees, houses, and cars all covered with powdery snow.
The roads remained wet since the temperatures were a bit warmer that day.
However, during the night, the wet roads became slick.
Our township workers are very faithful to salt the roads in our little town.

As they put an even layer of salt on the street, a pile must have come out of the truck.
There it was.
Remnants of the night before.
While I slept, township workers were ensuring our safety.

As the salt truck comes around it scatters a fine layer of salt over the roads.
Very rarely do you see piles of anything.
Perhaps the truck was quite full.
Perhaps the truck was nearing the end of its load.

Either way, a pile of rock salt was in our road.
I thought about how that pile would be a little boy’s dream.
I could imagine my own boys zooming matchbox cars and trucks through the pile.
No one in our development of twenty-four houses had driven through the rock salt yet.

I knew that soon the school buses would go down the street.
Even after all the buses had picked up the children, the pile was still intact.
My husband would have shoveled it off the street but he was away on business.
I wondered if my neighbor across the street would eventually shovel it.

The pile remained.
I actually thought that if someone shoveled the rock salt, they could put it in a bucket.
Whoever shoveled it would have additional rock salt for the next snow storm.
The pile remained but was soon flattened since cars eventually drove over it.

Rock salt is very effective when the roads are icy.
However, sitting there in a pile all lumped together, rock salt does nothing.
Lumped together, the rock salt is just a mess.
It is a mess that needs to be shoveled or dispersed.

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth…As for you, be fruitful and increase in number, multiply on the earth and increase upon it. (Genesis 9:1, 7)

After the flood, the postdiluvian people were to fill the earth.
God commanded this to ensure that the earth would be repopulated after the global flood.
However, despite God’s command, the people disobeyed.
Ego and reputation reared their ugly heads.

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.  As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11:1-9)

All lumped together, the people decided to do something to make a name for themselves.
They forgot God’s purposes and thought only of their own.
They wanted to build a tower that reached heaven so they would live in a city rather than scatter.
They were in essence, competing with God.

God confused their language.
God scattered the people over the earth.
All lumped together, the people would be ineffective for God’s purposes.
Scattered, they would fill the earth as God commanded, glorifying Him instead of themselves.

A pile of rock salt in the street is ineffective.
To do what it is supposed to do, rock salt must be scattered over the road.
In a heap, rock salt just sits there ready to be trampled.
Scattered over the road, it melts ice and makes the way less treacherous.

Lumped together in our Christian bunches and groups we are ineffective.
We get too comfortable and evangelism suffers.
We need to scatter and be in and among the people who do not know the Lord.
Through our scattering, we make Him known.

Un-lump!
Come out of those comfortable groups.
Go out and proclaim all the Lord has done for you and share the good news of the Gospel.
Scattering is effective for the kingdom so that we make Him known to the ends of the earth.