TOILET PAPER

It’s a crazy world. That’s not new news… We just haven’t been reminded of how crazy until the next crisis comes around. I rarely write about personal or controversial things, but today, I’m gonna make an exception. Today we tackle toilet paper…

People are actually getting in physical altercations at stores over grocery carts and toilet paper. The world has gone mad. Anxiety and fear over the pending pandemic have a strangle hold on them.

I was out of town this week and came home to an Old Mother Hubbard kind of cupboard and frig, even the mustard bottle was on reserve.

The grocery store parking lot was jammed. It had more cars in it than I’d ever seen before. I had to park by the McDonald’s.

As a young man I was a little embarrassed to buy toilet paper. I’d have been proud to have some in my basket the other day, but there’s not a stitch of it at the store. The shelves look like something from the depression.

It’s peculiar how you can see fear in people’s eyes. Tough times are like truth serum; it exposes people for who they really are. The manners, for the most part, were gone. It was every person for themselves.

I know I might say it too much, but I have to remind myself that God either causes or allows all things. To fear a situation more than we do the One who caused or allowed it is to bring dishonor to Him. The Coronavirus is sitting right next to us… in the palm of His hand…

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My dad was born into a cotton picking sharecropper’s family. He was smack in the middle of nine kids. I suppose the first time he ever saw indoor plumbing was at school.

Old habits die hard. I recall as a little kid my dad rubbing folded toilet paper together. It looked like someone trying to warm their hands up, only with the paper in-between his hands.

I learned that when he was a kid they didn’t have, nor could they afford, toilet paper. They had the Sears and Roebuck catalog sitting in the outhouse… They made their own toilet paper.

There were a few times as a kid we’d run out of toilet paper. And I learned first hand, or hands, that you can turn a piece of notebook paper into a soft piece of toilet paper… it just takes time.

I suppose if the world doesn’t come to its senses we can all use the stacks and stacks of junk mail that gets delivered to our homes every day and turn it into toilet paper.

We all have some anxiety and fear, some more than others, but I refuse to give into the enemy and let running out of toilet paper occupy a second of my life.

When it’s our time to go, God doesn’t need a virus to fulfill His will. And as Paul pointed out, it’s better to be absent from this body and to be present with The Lord.

Where we’re going we won’t need any toilet paper…