A dangerous shelf to live on

Published 9:00 am Sunday, August 3, 2025

Hi, all! 

Something I don’t have to tell any of you is the fact that we are currently living in a very weird world. In a weird world, there are weird people with weird titles doing weird things in their own weird ways and expecting the rest of us weirdos to label them as perfectly healthy and normal.

One day recently, I was roaming the aisles of one of those “dollar” stores that pop up seemingly overnight in any small community that turns its back too quickly to notice. I was looking for canned dog food, the thick kind with the gravy that my parents’ dog had specifically requested for her daily meals. I wasn’t familiar with this specific store, so it took me a few minutes to locate the correct aisle and then search for the correct products. Here, I used that word “correct” very loosely.  

What I hope you can see from my picture is the labeling of the shelf underneath these cans. I didn’t stage this. These weren’t just two random cans that some kid had stuck there on his way to the toy section. An entire case of Campbell’s Chunky soups was very neatly arranged in between several different dog food brands, and the shelf label read “Wet Dog Food.” An entire case — put here on purpose by someone who obviously wasn’t paying attention.

In this weird world full of us weird folks, we must pay attention. We must pay attention to those around us.  They are hurting, they are lost, and they need Jesus. Some are wearing labels that are different from us. Many of those labels are self-imposed, but many of those labels are ones we have attached because we assume their owners are just another one of those same-old same-old.  

Someone mistakenly assumed this soup was just some more of the same old dog food that the person was already so disinterested in stocking, that they never paid any attention to the face of the cans.

Don’t make the same mistakes this week. Pay attention to the faces of those “weirdos” around you. Remember you are perhaps a “weirdo” to them. Regardless, we all deserve to be seen. No one wants to be stacked where they don’t belong simply because we don’t care enough to pay attention to their needs. 

“Love your neighbor as yourself” means, in part, that we are to love one another, regardless of their labels and regardless of how those labels came to be. We must first see the label before we can help move them to the correct place that God has designed for them. Weird world or not, weird labels or not, none of us is a mistake. We do, however, make mistakes and then say God made us this way. That’s a dangerous shelf to live on. God made you to serve Him. Do so with the label of one who knows we sometimes sit in the wrong place, but inside we are still the same person God made us to be.

Sitting on that shelf no more made that soup into dog food than the dog food would have been on a soup shelf. Don’t worry about the labels the world throws upon you. What matters is what God knows you really are on the inside.

(Perhaps I should make a disclaimer here. I don’t want some disgruntled Campbell’s Soup employee suing me for this portrayal of their product as dog food. Not only was I not responsible for the incorrect placement of the product or the shelf label, I am, after all, a proud Campbell myself. And like my parents’ dog, Lady, I too love my gravy. LOL.)

Just a thought. ’Til later.

Brad Campbell can be reached at mastah.pastah@yahoo.com.