About sitting in a different place in church

One morning, at the funeral of a very respected parishioner, I found myself having to sit on the back row of the right-hand side of the very full church whereas we generally sit on the third or fourth row of that same side.

Now please don't take this the wrong way. It isn't that we have an invisible nameplate on 'our' bench. If someone else should be occupying it when we arrive, we just accommodate ourselves happily elsewhere.

However, it is a recognisable fact that most regular church-goers tend to sit in the same place each week. Perhaps it is just human nature. As I viewed our church from this different perspective, I became aware of, or rather 'saw' everything in the church in a way that I wouldn't have done from my usual position.

I think it just brought into my mind a recognition that so much of what we do in everyday life is done on auto-pilot and perhaps it's a good idea to sometimes  'sit somewhere else,' figuratively speaking, just to see what we may have lost sight of.