Last Saturday, I posted a piece I titled, The Coming Invasion. In the article, I pictured humans as squatters who refuse to recognize God’s ownership of the earth. The article itself was adapted from another piece I started years ago and never finished. It sat in my files with the title Unused.

Interestingly, before the article was posted on Saturday on WordPress and Substack, I was forced to deal with squatters. I walked over to California Road Missionary Church, where I serve as pastor, and found an RV in our parking lot, with an extension cord plugged into an outlet on our building.

I went out and knocked on the driver’s side door, but there was no answer besides a chorus of barking dogs. I took a picture of the vehicle, then walked around it, and came to the “entrance door.” There I found a hand-written sign in the window: “Sorry about the inconvenience… My key broke in the ignition and now the entire get-up is broken. I got someone coming in the AM to fix it and I’ll be gone. Sorry also about my dog…My female is in heat and he don’t handle it the best but his [sic] OK. LOL.” Below the sign was a name and a cell phone number. I promptly texted the phone, but did not promptly receive an answer.

That was on a Wednesday. Later in the day, I saw the man (I’ll call him “B”) who had come to fix it. He said nothing about the ignition, but told me the fuel filter was probably plugged, and he didn’t know where it was located on the vehicle. We conversed for a few minutes and, before I went inside, I politely told him that the vehicle would need to be moved since we had a meeting that evening and it was sitting sideways across parking spaces near our handicap parking. He assured me he would take care of it, even if he “had to tow it with [his] truck.”

(I should pause to say that B’s truck was a late model pickup, banged in on one side, with a window that had been shattered. B told me that he lived out of this truck, though I once found him sleeping in the RV. The RV was in worse shape than the truck. Its roof was overlaid with loose-fitting tarps, and at least one window was covered with cardboard, and the entire vehicle looked as if it were falling apart.)

When evening came, there was no one at the RV except the dogs, three of them, all German Shepherds or mixed breed German Shepherds. People coming to the meeting had to find new parking places, away from the handicap spots. After the meeting, I met the owner of the RV (whom I’ll call “T”), when she came to get water from one of our outside spigots. We invited her in, and I got water for her from the sink, while she used the church restroom. Before we parted, I kindly told her that the RV would need to be moved. She assured me that “B” didn’t know what he was doing, but her brother would come the next day with the right parts and fix it.

But on the next day, as far as I know, no one came. I saw no one for most of the day, though someone had let the dogs out – there was dog manure everywhere. I also notice a bucket of what I took to be human excrement. (I don’t think you can train German Shepherds to go in a bucket.)

I texted T and heard back from her that she had been in the hospital with preeclampsia. (T is 8-months pregnant.) I texted the following two days, and did not hear back at all. Was T having the baby? Was she ill? I saw B, but he said nothing about T except that she needed to stop lollygagging and get the RV moved. (“Lollygagging” was my G-rated version of what he really said.)

On Saturday, I told B the RV must be moved. I texted the same thing to T, but didn’t hear back. On Sunday morning, I came to church, and there was the RV. I knocked on the door and was answered by the dogs, but there were no humans present. Just dogs and dog poop.

After church, I texted T: “T, you haven’t been responding to my tests and I don’t know what is happening with you and I have been worried. I don’t know if you are at a friend’s like before, in the hospital, or in the RV. I told B yesterday that I would need to contact the police if the RV was still here on Sunday. I expect them to take the dogs to the shelter and impound the vehicle. I will call them after church services today.”

That text elicited four responses, including a plea not to “call the cops.” I gave T until Tuesday. I was away on Monday, but when I came to church on Tuesday morning, the RV was still there. B came in the late morning and told me the RV would be gone in five minutes. It was still there 90 minutes later. When I came out of the office to speak with someone in the lobby, the RV finally pulled away.

I feel badly for T and B. Their lives are a mess, and their future seems bleak. They are living in squalor and are determined to continue living that way. Though I gave them bags of food and my wife and I suggested options to them, they seemed completely uninterested in making any changes.

I see myself in T and B. There was a time when I lived in God’s world as if I owned it, using his resources without acknowledgment, and often making a mess of things. I gave too little thought to the Owner and what He might expect of me. Even after I came to acknowledge him as “Lord,” I have often been remiss in expressing gratitude to him. But I am hardly the only one. There is a whole world of people living in the same way, yet God “is patient toward [us], not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance”—that is, to a life-transforming change of mind.

I can live in a million-dollar home (I’ve never even owned a home), drive expensive cars (I drive a late-model Honda), and eat in Michelin-starred restaurants (Applebee’s is more like it), and still be a squatter. I didn’t make this world, and I don’t own it. It is God’s creation, and he retains ownership. It is only right to acknowledge that.