The cozy white church is miles from any town on a long stretch of country road. When I first arrived as pastor and looked around, I noticed a portable toilet in the back parking lot, near the small cemetery fence but at a tactful distance from the gate.
All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your faithful shall bless you. – Psalm 145:10 (NRSV)
“You’ll be surprised how many people stop here to use this,” a beloved elder of the church told me. “We set it up for people visiting the cemetery, but it gets lots of delivery drivers, service trucks, and people just trying to make it home from somewhere or other.”
You can’t actually see the little blue hut from the road, but word gets around, I guess. Whenever I’m in the church office, a truck or two will pull over just for this purpose. If I happen to be in the lot at the same time as one of the drivers, I say hello and introduce myself. Most of the time, though, I just glimpse the passersby from my office window. It might be my imagination, but it seems to me that as they drive away, they are less tense, shoulders more relaxed, breath coming easier.
I’m pretty sure when the psalmist wrote the words “all your works shall give thanks to you…” they couldn’t have conjured up a little rest stop in the back lot of a church yard in the rainy Pacific Northwest, and yet here we are. Providing a spot in between for flagging drivers, that they might bless rather than curse the journey.
Prayer
O Lord, make our community a true respite for weary travelers. Amen.