I’m on the road again after a pretty quiet summer, at least travel-wise. I knew I’d be a little rusty about getting everything ready so for once I was ahead of the game until I noticed a message I missed from the airport shuttle company that they would be coming 25 minutes early. I read the message just as the knock came to the door. Luckily everything was already packed so I grabbed the University of Southern California sweatshirt from under the bed knowing I would probably need it in Pennsylvania and rushed out the door.

The sweatshirt proved a little warm for the plane, but I wore it anyway because the t-shirt I had on underneath it was full of holes and Clorox stains. (More on that some other time.)

There were a couple times in the airport and on the plane where I was aware of a faint urine smell. It wasn’t bad – just enough to notice. I did look around each time and try and figure out where the smell was coming from, and usually there was someone nearby who looked like they hadn’t had a bath in a week. So I surmised it was them, and went on with my business.

On my second flight – the one from Philadelphia to Baltimore – I got a little chill switching from inside to outside and back in again and started to sneeze. That’s when I buried my nose into my elbow, the considerate germ-free way to sneeze in public – and smelled it. The faint urine smell I’d smelled all day was on me. One of our dogs had probably been lying on the sweatshirt under the bed. And here I had pegged at least three people that day with not taking proper care of themselves.

How often is the thing we judge others for really our problem that we don’t see? Actually I think it is true most of the time. We probably wouldn’t even be aware of it, in someone else, if it wasn’t our problem in the first place.

What smell are you carrying around all the time that you put on everyone else? And isn’t it amazing how many people have it? By golly, its everywhere you turn. What is the world coming to, anyway? When are these people going to get it together and get cleaned up?

If any Catch readers are in the vicinity of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I’ll be speaking in chapel at Lancaster Bible College over the next three mornings at 9 a.m. Would love to meet you!