While in Indianapolis to help our daughter and her kids, I happened upon a sale of pecans at a local Kroger store. Pecans are good in a multitude of products, so getting four or five pounds at a 50% discount was pretty sweet. (No pun intended.) We got them home and promptly lost, oops, misplaced them. So when it came time to make a nice coffee cake with pecans, we were out of luck. And of course, party mix, that salty concoction of Chex and nuts, was also out of the picture. Until we found the nuts, that is.
Hurrah! Let the cooking and concocting commence. But we had to wait a few days, because the party mix has to “cook” for over four hours. The pecans were “put away” until needed. When the cook got ready to make a big batch of the salty treat, she went looking for the pecans. They were nowhere to be found. We searched the pantry, the laundry shelves, a spare bedroom closet, every cupboard, and no pecans were uncovered. Alternative, go to the store and buy a batch at full price.
“In the course of human events,” the garbage and recyclables accumulate and are periodically taken to the recycling center. Things get very interesting here. I have separate bins for cardboard, plastic, paper, and slicks. Normally, I prefer to drive between the dumpsters for trash and cardboard. Then I can dump both garbage and cardboard in one stop. This time, the line for that aisle was populated, and the garbage only line was open. In I went and the garbage was tossed into the proper place.
These are compressing dumpsters for those who have never visited. When the open mouth of the compacter is filled, a hydraulic cylinder compresses the accumulation into the waiting bin. This is an important part of the continuing story.
Then I swung around to the opposite side of the cardboard bin to deposit my accumulated stash of discarded boxes. The cardboard hopper was empty, meaning that it had just been compressed. It was easy to look into the bin and see anything deposited there. I emptied my bin into the evacuated hopper and turned to notice that the “plastics” dumpster had a notice that it was full. So I took my little bin of milk cartons, (crushed, of course), and other miscellaneous plastic to the attendant who was picking something out of the cardboard bin.
“Do I just dump my plastics in the garbage hopper?” I asked.
She didn’t answer that, but turned to scold me. “Don’t dump garbage into the cardboard bin.”
“I didn’t,” I replied.
“Then what is this?” she queried. And her gripper pulled out a Kroger bag of, you guessed it, packages of pecans. I watched in amazement as she retrieved two or three additional packages that had fallen out of the sack, and...just for good measure, two bags of mini Reeses Cups. Dark chocolate, mini Reeses cups. You know, the kind that you press into peanut butter cookie dough and make wonderful treats. (One hundred carbs or so, apiece, but the doctor said we could splurge on occasion.) ((I do.))
Explanation: The “wandering” pecans had been stashed on a ledge by the back door in the garage. The ledge overlooks the cardboard bin. The bag of pecans and the bags of Reeses had been inadvertently swept from the ledge and had fallen into the cardboard bin. They had subsequently been covered and hidden by additional cereal boxes and the like.
Now the story gets interesting. Had I made the normal stop, between bins, I would have driven off to the plastic recycler and never been aware of the “dumped pecans.” But I had to circle around to the cardboard recycler. And this is the first time I had seen this lady, or anyone, picking foreign objects out of the recycling dumpster. Two coincidences or three.
There always have been at least two plastic recycling receptacles, so when one is full, we just dump in the other. There was only one, and it was full, causing me to turn to the nice lady for my “scolding.” And for the retrieval of our nuts.
Did God orchestrate that intricate set of events just to save us a few dollars? I can confidently affirm that He is interested and involved in the most minute of matters. He is running the entire universe, and has time to teach me a lesson on lost things. “God is good. All the time. All the time, God is good.”
By extension, is He interested in a friend of mine who has lost his way? I can confidently affirm that He is interested in the most minute of matters. From nuts to wandering wonderers, He is there, and He is involved.
This is just nuts.
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