Don't Be Silly!
- Joe Venturo
- Jan 8
- 4 min read
It is a nice but anxious dinner. The slightest sounds cause us to turn our heads in nervous anticipation. We sit outside in our gazebo, enjoying the cool night air and the Christmas lights that we’ve hung around the ceiling. Suddenly, a louder sound throws us into confusion.
I whip my head around, peering into the darkness and seeing a row of lights on top of what appears to be a tall vehicle.
“Dad . . . I think that’s it!”
Dad vaults from his chair and tears open the zipper door of the gazebo. Stumbling out onto the site, he runs to the road and peers into the darkness at the truck that is pulling in close to the campground office.
When he returns, he gives me a withering look and mutters, “That was not the mail truck.”
We sigh and slump into our chairs. We have been tracking this package like a hawk hunting rats, and it was supposed to arrive by tonight.
“Now it says tomorrow,” Dad informs everyone glumly, raising his eyebrows at his phone and glaring at the little delivery-man icon on the screen.
This reassuring news does not boost our confidence as much as you might think. After all, there are an infinite number of “tomorrows,” and once you get to your fourth or fifth “tomorrow,” you start to wonder whether your package will be delivered at all.
This is the Christmas feeling. This is how we look forward to the holidays.
Obtaining packages is a complicated process any time of year when you are traveling in an RV. You must order at exactly the right time so that the product arrives at your next location when you are going to be there. And if it arrives damaged, or is delayed, or doesn’t arrive at all, that sets off another chain reaction of problems to solve in order to finally lay hands on your stuff.
Now that it was Christmas time, we were ordering a lot more packages than usual. But it was not supposed to be so stressful. We had been told that it would be easy to get packages at our campground in southern California. So far, there had been some sort of problem with every package we had ordered.
And that’s how it had come to this. Now, we have to put a watchperson on guard 24/7.
“If you hear the delivery truck, let me know,” Dad earnestly instructs.
“Dad!!! It’s here!”
Dad races outside, slamming the already-overworked door behind him, yanks on his blue-and-white clogs, and sprints down the street. Because the delivery man will simply not deliver your package to the office if there is no one at the office. And there is usually no one in the office. Hence it is necessary to intercept the truck as soon as it enters the campground.
When Dad is not home, we kids must take up the job.
“Go! Hurry!” Mom has never sounded more urgent.
My lungs burn and my heels pound hard into my flip-flops as I race to grab the all-important package containing my own Christmas presents.
Box in hand, we run back to the trailer and open it to find something wrong with the contents. The size is not what we had ordered. It is junk. There is nothing for it but to return the product and start the process all over again.
It seems comical, but when you are actually in the middle of a truck interception, it is a very serious time. And as silly as you might feel as you dash through the campground, you push aside everything to get that package.
Many of us don’t like to do anything that might appear silly. We are afraid to make do, to do things a different way, to break out of our poise. We fear that we may somehow tear down the barriers that we have erected to hide our real personality—our real human-ness—and ruin our exalted, self-fabricated mental image of ourselves.
But . . . think about it. Was it silly for us to race around the campground waving down delivery trucks? To eat dinner in perpetual vigilance? Of course not! Why not? Because we were doing it—and willing to do it—for a purpose. We had to do it in order to obtain to what we had paid for. So we were not afraid to do something that probably appeared comical, even silly, to anyone who might be observing.
Let’s face it—most of the actions that we call “silly” really aren’t that silly after all because they’re just personality—human-ness—showing through. Yet even when we’re talking about things that aren’t silly, but we feel silly doing them—they become no longer silly when we have reason and purpose for our actions.
So, fellow Christian, let’s bring it home. Are you willing to do what makes you feel silly in order to do what’s right? To give someone a Gospel tract? To talk to your neighbors or others you encounter? To run from wickedness even though everyone else thinks its no big deal, or even to run from what is not inherently wicked but that bothers your own conscience?
Friend, as silly as it may make you feel, it’s never silly to do what God wants—to do what matters for eternity. So, don’t take yourself so seriously, and remember that as silly as it feels to hand someone that Gospel tract, or to refuse an offer that will make you sin, you will feel much sillier when you stand before God, and feel His eyes on you, and hear Him ask why you spent your tiny life living to sustain an imaginary, idealized version of yourself. That will feel silly. And in this case, it will be silly, too.
