Short Stories

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Back when town dumps were common in rural areas, there was a pastime that some engaged in known as “dump pickin’.” I guess to some, it might seem kind of disgusting to go picking through what others had decided was no longer fit for anything and just tossed away. For my wife and I, living in rural Maine, it was sort of an adventure to see if we could find something of value. Quite often when we went to throw out our junk, we’d find something worth taking home with us that we could get some use out of. I guess you’d say we were consummate in applying the old adage about one man’s trash being another man’s treasure.

One of my wife’s favorite dump picking excursions is one on which she didn’t accompany me and which didn’t happen at a rural dump, rather at a condominium development near Baltimore where I happened to be working getting units ready for new move-ins. I discovered in one of the dumpsters more than 20 pairs of shoes, all in new or nearly new condition, and all my wife’s size. She was one happy camper when I returned from work that day.

I will never forget one of the most prosperous and sweetest dump picking experiences we have ever had. We had finished unloading our trash, and were walking around seeing if there were any items that we might use, when we spotted, off to one side, a cardboard box. I thought, “Well, might as well see if there’s anything in it.” I gingerly opened it with a stick in case there was something there that I didn’t want to find and lo and behold, about a dozen large canning jars full of honey peeked out. I carefully checked them to see if they had been thrown out because of the jars being cracked or broken, and decided that the only reason for being there was that someone thought the honey was no good because it had semi-crystallized. Warming in a pan of hot water would bring it back to it’s original consistency, or it could be used just as it was.

All the way home, and for a long number of weeks after that, we kept saying, “I can’t believe we found all this honey in the dump.” We were careful not to tell our weak-stomached friends about serving them honey from the dump, but in reality, it was almost as if God had set that box there for us to find. The jars weren’t even more than a little dusty on the outside and all perfectly sealed.

When that incident came back to mind recently, I thought, “Honey is honey, no matter whether you buy it in a high class health food store or find it in the dump.” Truth is a lot like that, too. Sometimes we find it in the most unusual places and even when we don’t expect to. Sometimes it turns up in places where we’d rather not admit we found it.

Take for example an adolescent, going through all the changes of puberty brought on by changing hormones and coming into a time when boys and girls turn into men and women and often wrestling with that transition. A father who works long hours trying to provide for his family may not want to accept the truth coming from that teenager’s mouth as he angrily shouts, “You don’t care about me! All you care about is your stupid job!”

More often than not, the truth being spoken will be missed because of the way it’s packaged. More often than not, what ensues is a battle of words that both father and son are doomed to lose. The truth is, that there has been a breakdown in communication and the son dearly needs more from his dad than food on the table and a roof over his head. The truth is, he is saying, ”Dad, I love you, but I’m not sure you love me, and I need to know that at this critical time in my life.” There is truth in what is spoken, though it may not be readily seen at first.

Another example of truth being truth, no matter where it’s found is that of a farmer who was showing his grandson around the farm. It was the boy’s first visit to the farm since he was old enough to really talk with the old man, and the grandfather was enjoying it immensely. As they walked around the barns, they passed the large pile of manure at the end of the milking parlor where the gutter cleaner had swept it out and where it waited to be spread as fertilizer on the surrounding fields. The young boy looked at the big pile and stammered, “Grampa, what do you do with the… with the…” The old man, long past caring for what some would call propriety and sensing the boy’s loss for words said, “You can call it shit, son. That’s what it is.”

We so often miss when people are speaking truth to us, because we forget to look for it, or because we are afraid of the consequences if we find it, or because we don’t like the way in which it’s packaged. We are leery of thinking that someone who differs with us may be speaking something that we desperately need to hear and from which we could ultimately learn and be benefited because we don’t like the way that it’s presented. Like others who most certainly passed that cardboard box of honey without giving it a second glance, thinking, “This is a dump. There’s nothing of value here,” how often we miss the sweetness of finding truth because we don’t believe it could ever be found “there.”

Naaman would have missed his healing had he not seen the truth in the words of his servants in 2 Kings 5:13. He had to go “dump picking” in the Jordan river to get his healing. How often we see Israel in slavery or oppression because they did not want to accept truth in the packaging in which God sent it: prophets that at times were not kind in their presentation of that truth. Pilate could not identify truth because it came to him in the form of a lowly carpenter.

We prefer to have the truth nicely packaged and presented to us with a bow wrapped around it and labeled in bold type, TRUTH. We don’t like to think about finding it in a dump. We don’t like accepting that God sometimes puts it in the most unexpected of places so that we will be exercised in hearing His voice rather than that of a screaming teenager or a crude old farmer. We don’t like the idea of the truth sometimes not being according to our concepts of propriety.

I think back on that box of honey, and I wonder what would have happened to it, had we not gone to the dump that day. Perhaps someone else would have found it, or perhaps it would have been bulldozed over the edge of the dump and wasted. In either case, it still would have been honey. I’m glad we found it, even if it was in a dump. I’m glad, too, every time I find truth, no matter where it is or how it comes packaged. It brings sweetness to the soul that lasts so much longer than that box of honey.

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