The Office: Of Banana Slicers & Other Small Things

Thank you to Cathy Harvey, Administrative Assistant, for writing today's blog.

My three sisters and I recently got together to swap stories and catch up on family news. It is always a great time filled with lots of love and laughter that ends too quickly, food and fellowship, and usually a gift exchange as we celebrate the colors and delights of each special occasion.

For this visit, a couple of my sisters couldn’t resist treating us to homemade delights and the odd and eccentric just for fun. One such oddity that brought howls of laughter as my sister read the reviews was a banana slicer—yes, a banana slicer.  My initial impression tagged it a ridiculous invention. How hard is it to simply grab a knife and slice a banana?  It takes all of 30 seconds, if that.  Prompt delivery to the Goodwill store came to mind.  I would rather clean a simple butter knife than all the slots in this piece of plastic. We were bent over in laughter, however, as my sister read rave reviews of the “marriage saving” device and critical complaints that it was curved in the wrong direction!

My youngest sister, who is editor of an inspirational quarterly for her church, wondered if there was a hidden lesson in there somewhere that she could springboard off of to use the hilarious reviews for a heart-tugging lesson. As we pondered what we could possibly glean from the silly slicer, we dared to come up with some positive characteristic of the little tool, and I began to think of the value of small things. 

For someone with arthritis, or recovering from a stroke and struggling with the use of their hands, it could, honestly, simplify their cutting effort. For children, it was 100% safe, eliminating the need to use a knife to slice a banana for morning cereal or an ice cream sundae dessert. It was dishwasher safe making it very easy to clean.  It had no sharp corners or edges. It was sized for any banana, large or small. And so on. I wouldn’t go so far as to claim it was a “marriage saver” as one viewer claimed, but it did have a place of usefulness, small and limited as its purpose was.

Life in the office has a number of seemingly small tasks and purposes too—none-the-less, important to the whole process of the running of a school. Things like keeping the office vacuumed, dumping the recycle bins, filling the copier with paper, shredding documents. 

What if…no one filled the copier with paper? We don’t have textbooks for our students; our instructors often write original material tailored to our students and make hundreds of copies a week for classes. What if no one ordered copier paper? What if no one emptied the recycle bins? What if no one ever vacuumed the dust, toner, staples and the hole punches off the carpet? What a mess we would have, and a dirty office to work in!  No day passes without such important tasks.

So, here’s to small things, small tasks, small tools—all pieces of the bigger picture for a greater good filling in the puzzle of what makes Shepherds College complete. Thanks to all our workers, residents, and student volunteers who take on little tasks that make a big difference in this small gem of a ministry in Union Grove, Wisconsin. So, yes, here’s to small things:  banana slicers, paper recyclers, and all!

“And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward.”              ~ Matthew 10:42


Shepherds College - Guiding Your Transition to Appropriate Independence. Please visit us at www.shepherdscollege.edu.