eternal perspective

Let’s see if I can put my thoughts into something that resembles logic. Last weekend we did something wild and spontaneous (which I am told is about 180 degrees away from my normal) and went to Village Inn for breakfast. It was as is to be expected, the usual food, the usual white trash help (people whom I usually relate to) in maroon shirts with polo collars that fail to hide the prison tats serving gray-haired customers that studiously try to avoid noticing the “ink” and, in this case, the 2 girls with green streaked hair, and the one girl with bright neon red bangs bussing tables.
So anyway, it struck me going in that there was this nice big clean table for our family of six, just sitting there empty and waiting for us to claim it. I did feel a little intrusive to the people directly next to our empty table, though, because they had a sort of “prior right” to that space, which was previously unoccupied. As we settled in and the people who were there before us finished their meals and started to leave, I began to feel more as if I were the one who belonged. Then after the people who were sitting in the table next to us left, and the very efficient green haired bus-girl swept away dirty dishes and wiped the table off, the hostess led in a new small family to it. We were just sitting there waiting for Isaiah to finish eating his “pam-pake” as he calls it when I recognized something in the customers coming to sit next to us.
First, I noticed the expression of small joy that “here is an empty clean table just waiting for us,” as if it were they that invented it. Then as they approached it, I saw them looking at us, sort of wondering if they were going to be an annoyance to us with their little family. I gave the dad the old one sided half-smile “don’t you worry about that, I’ve got a mess-o-kids me own self look” to reassure him he wasn’t infringing on any territorial rights. That’s when I realized how we as humans develop what I would call a “proprietary” feeling around the things we are comfortable with. How trivial it is that we cling tightly to things that are not even really ours, and that we are only briefly using; sometimes just an hour or less.
So, of course, I think the Lord moved me to look into my own life as a flash in the pan, a brief moment in the scope of eternity, or maybe as a short breakfast at V.I., to look for the things that I cling to. Funny how important it seems that my grass is kept short, that my fence is painted, that my front porch gable gets siding installed, when things that are eternal, like people, are left behind for things just as silly as feeling possessive about certain square footage around a borrowed table. Just like today, I felt temporarily proud of myself for being able to “duck” out of conversation with a talkative gentleman that I knew has been going through an extremely tough time in his life, including the loss of several loved ones in a matter of weeks. And to what purpose? To go back to my shop and get back to what seemed very important at the time. A good opportunity to help someone, passed up, like many others. Lord, give me wisdom to glean what is eternal from what is temporal, and to act accordingly. And while you are at it Lord, teach me to express my thoughts in a short, concise manner, so as not to bore everyone to tears.