Hello

by Brian Ritchie

March 2025

We recently threw out a 40-year-old refrigerator.

While this is a fairly common occurrence across the country and wouldn’t normally be considered newsworthy, it was not easy on me, given my ancestral heritage as a Scot—which, as you may know, is a breed of men who end up in a lot of fights, mostly because they like to wear skirts to pubs. But a lesser-known quality of the Scottish male is that he is frugal. Or you might use the word cheap.

As a result, it bothered me to dispose of our trusty ice box, especially because there really wasn’t anything wrong with it. Like a lot of 40-year-olds, its plumbing still worked with regularity, disrupted only occasionally by gassy noises.

And though the motor ran just fine, several articles on websites with addresses like onlylosershaveoldstuff.com explained that a more efficient model would pay for itself by the time our grandchildren graduated from college.

Our grandchildren haven’t been born yet.

“Nothing is wasted and value doesn’t disappear just because we drag it to the curb.”

Anyway, I sat at our front window watching Old Faithful as it stood by the curb, like an unsure child on the first day of school.

The whole scene felt wrong, and I had to quell the urge to run out there and rescue it.

When did we become such a cruel society?

What had that appliance done to us other than faithfully keep our food fresh and cool for four decades?

Nothing.

Yet I hauled it outside on a cold night, stripped it of its doors, and placed them just out of reach.

The New Refrigerator

I keep looking at the new fridge that postures in the place of our old, loyal one and can’t figure out how it all happened.

I woke up one morning and apparently democracy had ended, because we were headed to the store.

There were choices like:

• Side-by-side doors

• Ice makers

• Water spouts

• Crisper drawers

• Adjustable shelves

• Freezer compartments

There were colors like plain white, black, and stainless steel.

And most importantly:

0% financing for the first 23 years and no money down.

Oh—and we can build the delivery cost into the life of your loan if you will sign here and initial these four places confirming that you were informed your new refrigerator will have the life expectancy of a chicken nugget in a dipping sauce factory.

What Happened?

Anyway, the two appliances from two very different times left me wondering the bigger question:

What’s wrong with me?

I’ve watched the news, and I could blame things like crime, the government, deep-fried food, online shopping, and gluten.

But I think those are just symptoms.

If we go back to when my generation was growing up, you’ll find that we were kicked out of the house at age five and given only a one-speed bike and a pocketknife to survive.

Sure, our moms hoped we would live.

But that’s why families used to be big.

If one of us didn’t make it, there were three or four others around to do the chores.

“Consequences weren’t tragedies to us. They were trophies.”

This kind of upbringing made us feral.

We were always dirty and scabby.

We took risks not because we loved pain but because consequences were trophies.

A kid with a cast on his arm got to spend six weeks filling it with signatures from cute girls and sayings from friends like:

“Hope you break the other one and have to have your mom wipe for you.”

If we got in a fight, it was about justice.

Especially when Eric kept inventing new dodgeball rules because he was losing.

And look—I’m not saying schoolyard scraps, broken bones, and jumping our bikes over each other made us smarter.

But it taught us something important:

To bury our feelings and press on.

The Gift of Boredom

We were also lone rangers.

We spent countless hours alone with:

• No internet

• No devices

• Nothing to entertain us

Empty heads and quiet rooms taught us that the world wasn’t going to fix our boredom.

Your options were simple:

• Lie on your bedroom floor and stare at the ceiling

• Toss a tennis ball against the house and pretend you were pitching in the World Series

• Find a friend and climb a tree

“Life experiences have blessed me with stories in which God has had something to say.”

Okay, maybe 70s parents weren’t perfect.

But life experiences have blessed me with stories in which God has had something to say—and I aim to prove it.

On Still Bright Hope, we’ll dig into funny situations.

We’ll laugh, cry, ponder, and shake our heads.

And always we will listen for God’s truth in His Word.

Because I think I’ve figured out one thing:

Nothing is wasted.

The Moment

I was eventually shaken from my trance—where I was thinking about nothing and everything at the same time—by an old truck that pulled up in front of my house.

An even older man got out.

He walked like one leg was shorter than the other.

Then he began studying my old refrigerator.

I held my breath.

In moments, he seemed to see the same value I had.

(He was probably Scottish.)

And he began loading it into his pickup.

I stood up in my living room and cheered.

Scripture

Psalm 119:130

“The unfolding of your words gives light;it imparts understanding to the simple.”

If I’m anything, I’m simple.

And I trust that God has the answers I need—and they can be found in the Bible.

The Hope

Nothing is wasted.

Not refrigerators. Not childhoods. Not mistakes. Not stories.

God uses it all.

And that’s how we keep it bright and hopeful.

Stay Connected

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