Monday, November 10th, 2003 - "Binner"

I am presuming that you, the reader, are intrigued by the title of this post; this was completely intentional. Like any Doug-esque (I'm in the mood to make up words tonight) explanation, I will start with the tangential background information that leads up to the main point, making it more comprehensible and interesting.

Our Bible Study made special arrangements to have dinner at our leader's house tonight. My original plan was to attend another church small group with my friend, and then both of us were going to head over to our Bible Study leader's house afterward. However, I arrived at our meeting place late, but fortunately, directions to the church were left for me in a phone message back in my room.

I decided that since I was out and about driving, I would stop first to turn in a job application while the place was still open. It is called "Our Place," a home for developmentally disabled children; I would be very excited if God should land me a job there. Typical of me, I didn't get directions (as I did for my first visit there) and went purely off my memory from the previous drive there. Hence, I got lost a few times before I found it, but now I am much more prepared for my (hopefully) next visit.

I started for the church with the (again) mental directions from my friend. All I had to know was that it was at the intersection of Kenwood and Arrowhead; I was just at that intersection two days ago when I got the oil changed in my car. Somehow, I ended up driving down St. Marie St., thinking that I was on Kenwood. If I had realized this at the time, I would have saved myself from an hour of driving around strange residential areas wondering when Arrowhead would be coming up....

I finally did find Arrowhead, but there was construction completely blocking my turn onto it. I got lost some more while trying to drive down nearby streets, running into more dead ends than a lab rat in a maze. Fortunately, God placed a cute, energetic elderly couple on the street to provide directions for me. I ended up finding the church and parking at 9:30 (the groups started at 7:30). The place was deserted except for the guy who was locking up the doors.

Fortunately again, through the wonder of cell phones, I was able to call our leader once I arrived back at my dorm. Our other leader came (with my friend in his car as well) to pick me up as we headed to the Bible Study gathering. We all told our stories of mixes and matches in trying to find each other, and we discovered something rather amusing.

My friend called our leader for a ride from the church around 9:00 since I was supposed to be his ride (and wasn't there). Our leader came and sat in the church parking lot until 9:20 before leaving, thinking that he had arrived too late to pick up my friend. My friend finished with the meeting and came out of the church at 9:25 before walking to Hardee's to call our leader (since the leader had just left the parking lot). I arrived at the church at 9:30 to pick up my friend.

Somehow, all three of us managed to miss each other within minutes, but after my friend and I each called our leader's cell phone from our respective places, all three of us ended up in the same car on our way to our small group. This is just the crazy story that leads up to the story of the "binner" which I find more amusing.

After sharing a satisfying and heartfelt meal together in fellowship, we spent some time to relax and watch the end of a football game. Our leader, since he is getting married relatively soon, is greatly reducing his amount of "stuff" by giving it away to his friends, and we were all conveniently there to support him in this endeavor. He had this one large bin full of random objects from his past, so we as a group proceded to hold a "binner" to claim objects that he no longer wanted.

I developed the term "binner" off of the well-known slang, "kegger," referring to a party with a keg of beer. Instead of popping open a large vat of beer, we popped open a large bin of random objects, i.e. K-Mart buttons, label makers, bracelets that you slap on to your wrist, Travel Connect 4, Michael Jordan pogs, etc. We discussed the advantages of a binner over a kegger, and I would like to share them with you:

1. A binner is free
2. It is okay if the contents of the bin get spilled
3. A binner allows for intimate fellowship, unhindered by a struggle for coherent and understanding thought
4. You remember the binner the next day
5. No special device is required to extract from the bin
6. Holding a binner will help you to clean stuff out of your house rather than messing it all up
7. Instead of waking up in the morning with an awful, sickening headache, you wake up with some new, really neat stuff!

It was a fun night. I pray that everyone may someday experience the joy of a binner as we all did tonight. Acts 2:44 - "And all the believers met together constantly and shared everything they had." (Context? What's that? Just kidding).

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