The Bus Bench

Years ago, at a busy intersection in my parents' neighborhood, was a bus bench. This particular bus bench always had writing on it, usually an advertisement for a local business. But one day, as I walked by that bus bench, I noticed it had new writing on it.

It said, rent me. So when I got home, I telephoned the number on the bench and I spoke with an individual who informed me, you could rent that bus bench for $30 a month and advertise on it whatever message you wanted. Well, $30 a month was a lot of money back in 1970, especially to a high school student, which was, that's what I was at the time.

But I got to thinking about that bus bench and I felt led to take the money I was making as a sack boy in a local grocery store and put that money to work for the benefit of others. So that day, a 16 year old called that bench company and I told them I wanted to advertise a Bible verse on that bench. I noticed that the bench sat at a busy intersection and it faced the road where you made a left-hand turn at the stoplight.

So people sitting in their cars, waiting for the light to change, had no choice but to sit facing that bench and be confronted with what was written on it. I thought about all the busy people who were in a mad rush, who drove by that bus bench on their way to work and at home at night and I prayed about what Bible verse to place on that bench and Ephesians 4.26 kept popping into my mind. So as I filled out that application for an advertisement on that bus bench, I wrote that I wanted Ephesians 4.26 put on there.

I remember the happiness I experienced when the painter finished painting that bench and it read, be ye angry and sin not, let not the sun go down upon your wrath. And for the next 12 months, I diligently sent that bench company $30 a month, which was a sacrifice for a poor kid whose only income was a job after school, sacking groceries. But people started to take notice of that Bible verse on that bench and they began to talk about it and think about it.

But what they didn't know was that a teenager was behind it. Since that time, I've handed out a lot of gospel tracts throughout my life, doing what I can to spread the word of God, but I'll always have fond memories of a certain bus bench. In a certain city in the South, there was a continual reminder to folks who were in a mad rush of life to slow down a little and not lose their temper so much with others and to sin not and don't let the sun set while you're angry with someone, but turn it all over to the God of Ephesians 4.26.