Signs

Signs. Signs. Everywhere signs.
Blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind.
Do this! Don’t do that! Can’t you read the signs?
- Tesla

Recently I was in a small town  where the signage on the elementary school and that on the church were identical except for one word. The difference, I believe, in the one word was more than the demarcation of an area in which an activity is forbidden. The difference was much, much greater.

For one location, a provider of education for the community, liability is a great concern for the community. Understandably.

For the other, liability may have eclipsed thought of anything else. Perhaps having skateboarders around was an inconvenience. Possibly it didn’t reflect well in the community for that group of people to be hanging around the property.

I would offer that solutions to the liability and the inconvenience could have been found. If a body of believers is about His mission–to seek and to save that which was lost–then this serves as an opportunity.

One sign hangs on a building in which every native of the community will have spent thousands of hours. The other hangs on a building that may have been visited a few times by individuals wearing a scratchy, starchy shirt for a wedding, a funeral, or some seemingly interminable lecture.

According to the two signs the prohibition is the same. The messages, however, could not be more different to the community.