A Wink from God
By Douglas Bunting
It was Easter Sunday. While others celebrated our Lord’s resurrection with their families, I was digging through a hundred pounds of bolus sludge at the end of a ten-hour shift. I couldn’t stop smiling.
I work as a banquet server, which requires me to work long shifts on major holidays. I spent Thanksgiving maintaining briny boats of shellfish, Christmas racing to flip tables for hundreds of people in under fifteen minutes, and New Year’s overhearing the sizzling fireworks from the damp kitchen where I was scraping half-eaten food off plates until 3:00 A.M. All the while, I missed being with my family and the carefree festivities of years past, when tuition was a word far removed from my vocabulary. I fought to remind myself that the opportunity to work and receive an education is a blessing that should never be taken for granted, but I couldn’t help feeling cursed by what life had handed me.
Come Easter Sunday, I was rather excited, as I would attend a sunrise service that morning before work. I went in my work clothes, planning to leave early. Yet my sterile uniform amidst the brightly clad church rendered the service bittersweet. It seemed my work was inescapable, encroaching on even a space as holy as this. And the solemnity continued to drag on sorely—the mundane routine of my shift grew more difficult as guests started to dissipate, leaving the staff with the remains of 500 dirty plates. I discovered a trash can that had been outrageously overfilled, a problem that can only be understood by those with experience in the service industry.
Heavy would have been an understatement; a large trash bag filled to the brim with food waste can weigh nearly 200 pounds, making it difficult to lift out of the can and into a trash chute that opens at chest height. In addition to the weight, overfilling creates strong suction between the bag and the can. This dramatically increases the force necessary to pull the bag out and the risk of tearing. The latter leads to a mix of oils, juice, and coffee gushing out—or, in extreme cases, food. Once, I witnessed one of my supervisors, infuriated, shove an entire industrial trash can down the chute.
On that holy evening, I found a can overflowing with what appeared to be only food, with no bottles or bulky objects to create pockets of air. I watched in horror as coworkers piled on even more waste in a careless effort to hasten cleanup. I began to pity the poor soul fated to take it out. Out of a sort of morbid curiosity, I attempted to lift the trash can slightly to ascertain its weight; it would not budge. I pulled once more with great effort, and I still couldn’t bring it to move out of its cell. It was like attempting to lift a building from its foundation—a Herculean task. This trash can was the responsibility of our stewarding staff, who would have to stay late into the night washing hundreds of pieces of every conceivable kind of cooking and dining equipment. I imagined their exhaustion upon lifting this behemoth bag of trash, and on Easter, no less! I donned a pair of nitrile gloves, secured an empty trash can, grabbed a dirty plate, and began my descent into the abyss. As I scooped a mélange of what was once Easter brunch, I thought of the irony of my situation: how disgusting it was, how ridiculous I must have looked, and yet the resurrected Lord seemed very much in my midst. I thought over God’s blessing to “be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.” I was rather surprised at this verse, for this scene seemed far from any kind of Garden of Eden. Regardless, I found the words apt for my work. This divine blessing describes tasks that inherently involve menial labor: subduing, meaning to cultivate harsh overgrowth, and multiplying as an action that requires time and patience. To belong to God, to live out this kind of blessing, requires a steady servant heart, the work ethic of a good steward. Jesus is always reminding us that the Gospel demands radical service: “but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Who was I to think myself too good for such a task when our King Jesus washed his apostles’ feet the night before His crucifixion? Who was I to believe the task to be beneath me, as though God’s lot for me was insufficient, as though He had given me a burden and not a blessing? Who was I to ignore what Christ had taught so plainly? Not only did I smile—I laughed. I laughed at the absurdity of it all, at myself for not understanding God’s lesson for me sooner, out of joy for what I could only describe as a wink from God: participation in the life of Jesus.
The task was complete. I stood with aching arms, soaked gloves, and a rich peace. This was the greatest Easter of my life, though I make a habit of forgetting it. When the world and all its idols tell you that you’re doing something worthless, menial, or beneath you, it is hard to think otherwise. But Jesus taught against the cultural current, and it is there we must follow. He never saw His labor as a mere means to an end; He saw the face of the Father in every soul He healed and blessed.
Despite what the world may remark about my kind of work, to dig through heaps of garbage is to encounter the living God.
Contributed by Douglas Bunting. Douglas is a junior at Regent University studying the Bible & Theology.
