Hargood Book Trailer
Over-analysis of the eighth chair
I'm sitting in a sanctuary while some friends rehearse for a worship service. I've been here for an hour and a half and have grown weary of the homework I brought. So I have been studying instead the room inwhich I find myself. This is a modern church, so the layout involves rows of those now-common red chairs adopted by the modern church movement. "New pews" as I dub them uncondemmingly. But what caught my eye was the count. There are... Maybe 250 chairs in here. I noticed that only a few were armed, so being OCD, I decided to count these armed chairs. Turns out there's only seven found set out. Again, being OCD, I went looking for a number eight to even this out. And I found him! Tucked away in the dark crevices of storage. It makes me sad but then it makes me laugh. I wonder to myself if they made a concious effort to only include seven - it is after all the perfect number. If it represents completion, what are we to do with an eighth chair? To imagine there is something beyond completion is an enigma to man. But that's where our Lord comes in. We reach our climax, our completion, our all, and yet he is still greater. The sun burns at its brightest, and yet the Lord is still greater. All the militaries in the world gather together with a plethora of mighty weapons, enough to destroy our planet 100 times over, and yet he is still greater. You see, he is the eighth chair. And we tuck him away in storage for back-up, when one of the seven falls apart. All the while, there is a back row that looks out of place, it throws off the whole fung shue of the room... It's short by one chair.