jim the junk man

i've shared this story with a couple of friends already, but i find that since it is still on my mind, it must bear repeating.

i have a junk hauler whose name is jim. lou referred him to me, from when she had some garbage from her garage renovation hauled away last spring.

he came over a week ago, and to be honest, my assessment of him (made quite quickly) was that he was fairly 'rough around the edges.' it was about 117 degrees then, and i unfortunately decided to leave my entire load of junk in the basement. jim was not super happy to have to haul it all upstairs, but he had a younger, toothless helper who was quite strong and who made quick work of things.

all in all, it was an okay encounter, nothing to write home (or blog) about.

yesterday, i was ready with load #2. this time, i had the foresight to do the hauling up the stairs (except for the extinct dryer still in the basement). so, things went much more smoothly. jim brought a different guy this time, named bob, who was also rather quiet, but seemingly a bit younger and quite a bit stronger than jim.

made me think jim is a pretty smart guy.

anywhoo, we finished loading up his truck in no time. i was looking around the garage, making sure that i did not forget any random junk that i wanted him to also take. when i came to some decorated bricks from VBS, he asked, and i told him i would just keep the stones the kids had painted in church ....

to which he quickly responded with the question "where do you go to church?"

and from that SIMPLE question, the next 20 minutes were a whirlwind of evangelism from jim the junkman that would have rivaled anybody i've seen at the pulpit in awhile. simply put, jim was on fire. he loves the Lord. he knows He exists because He lives in his heart. he thinks we all get stuck on religion, and forget it's about relationship. he says you gotta call on the name of JESUS. he says he knows that he's goin' to Heaven, and gosh darn it, it's gonna be quite a transformation when he gets there.

what was extraordinarily cool about this, was that bob (quiet guy) was not so sure about all this christian stuff, especially not about Jesus. so, in a way, the 2 of us - jim and i - talking about the great things we know to be true about Christ - seemed to have started some wheels turning. you could literally SEE him thinking about it! it was neat. he asked some questions that he'd been wondering about...and we were glad to put our thoughts in on the God we know.

and i was not too surprised at all when jim followed up with 'well, bob, i can see we're probably gonna have to talk about this some more' - and i paid him, shook both their hands and told them it was a pleasure, and they hopped in the junk haulin' pickup and drove down the street.


that, my friends, was a very good thing to experience. and jim the junkman taught me (again) a very important lesson about things not always looking like they seem on the surface....! thank God!

:)