This Church Is Grassroots

My family lives right down the street from a large church, which we pass on our way to our own church, school, and the store where we shop; basically, we pass it pretty much every day.

When I was in grade school, the church began a large expansion project to add a new wing onto the building. They dug a large hole in the ground next to the building, which I figured was going to be the basement for the new wing. Every day when I passed by the church, either in the car or the school bus, I would look at the hole to see if they had started building the new wing in it yet. Several months went by, and I saw nothing — still just a hole in the ground, even though there seemed to be workers there every day.

One day, while I was riding in the car with my mom, I said to her, “They still haven’t started building that new church yet!” And she responded, “Yes, they have; what do you call that?” She pointed to the side of the church opposite from the hole… where the new wing stood, completely finished.

Yes, that’s right: I had been so distracted looking at the hole every time I passed the church that I had completely missed the new wing going up right before my eyes. It turns out that the hole was actually just a large drainage ditch, which they just happened to be digging at the same time the construction was going on. In hindsight, I should have been clued in by the fact that they had spread grass seed in the hole, but my only thought upon noticing that was, “Why do they want grass in the basement?”