The wildly popular American pop phenomenon, Glee, introduced a song Bust Your Windows. The chorus of the song goes, ‘I bust the windows out your car’ and this reminded me of a short story I read in a church bulletin once.
I shall relate the story as I remember it.
One parishioner of a church, a rather pious and devout Catholic (when it suited him) had just bought a proud new BMW. It was black, fast and powerful - just how he liked it. He was so proud of his new ‘toy’ that he drove it to church the Sunday it arrived from the dealer.
After mass, he was the first out of the church and with a rev of his engine, he was off and away.
Suddenly, as he was driving along a quiet road, feeling absolutely contented with the fine purring of his engine, his side window shattered as a brick smashed through the glass and onto the empty passenger seat.
Furious, he stopped his car and marched out to confront the imbecile who had committed the treacherous act. A small, pale boy with a skinny frame stood before him, trembling in the cold wind. His anger started to dissipate a little as he asked the boy, “Boy, did you throw the brick at my car?”
The boy replied, “I’m so sorry sir, It was all I could think of to stop you.” He then pointed to an empty wheelchair and a bigger boy lying on the pavement beside the wheelchair. The boy explained that he was pushing his brother to the church and his brother had fallen off the wheelchair. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t lift his brother back onto it. The elder boy was in pain and had given up. The boy was desperate and so he had thrown the nearest object, a brick, at the BMW.
“I was waving to you from afar, sir, but you didn’t seem to see me. I didn’t know what else to do so I threw the brick. I’m so sorry, sir!”
The parishioner helped the elder brother up and into his car and gave the two of them a lift to the church.
Sometimes in life, we’re going so fast and are so pleased or caught up with what we’re doing, that we fail to look around us and think and consider others. We might or might not get a brick thrown at us to stop us in our tracks.
Do we know what’s happening to those around us? Are we concerned? Are we listening to what God is saying to us?
Sometimes I tend to ignore these silent promptings as I’m caught up in ‘work’ or ‘serving Christ’. Even in legion work, we need to ask ourselves: Are we doing work for the sake of fulfilling our allocated work or are we truly legionaries of Mother Mary’s army!
As for Glee and busting windows, the lines “You broke my heart so I broke your car…Why am I the one who’s still crying” explains it all.
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