Hello,
“Will you please pick up a box of these on your way to the wedding,”
said my wife to me as I was getting ready to go out the door on Saturday. The “box of these” was a box of vinyl
gloves that she needed so she could apply some stain to a bench that she was
refinishing. Since I was giving
myself about an extra half hour before the wedding party was to arrive, I said
that I could do that, especially because the store was on the way to church.
When I arrived at the store, one of those huge stores that has
everything that you want and everything that you don’t need, the parking lot
was full, as you would expect on a Saturday afternoon. Stubbornly trying to find a spot close
to the door, I drove up and down a number of lanes until I realized I was just
going to have to walk, parking several lanes away from the door and quite a
ways away from the door.
My wife told me that I would be likely to find these vinyl gloves in the
pharmacy area of the store.
Confessing to male blindness in shopping, I must have walked up and down
every aisle of the pharmacy section four or five times, not finding the
assigned gloves. Fortunately, I
found an employee of the store, decked out in her store’s vest, and so I asked her,
“Do you happen to have vinyl gloves?”
“Medical or cleaning gloves?” she
asked me.
“I don’t know. My wife
needs them to put some stain on a bench.”
“Oh, then you can find them on the furthest aisle, next to the
band-aides.”
“Thanks,” I said, and ventured where I was directed, and behold boxes of
gloves….all latex.
To my surprise, I heard, “Sir, I am sorry, but I think that you’ll find the
gloves that you want in the cleaning area in the back of the store.” It was the woman who realized her error
and had come to be of greater assistance.
So, off I went to the back of the store, which was a football’s field
away. Unfortunately when I got
there and wandered through the cleaning supplies area numerous times, male
shopper’s blindness returned and I couldn’t find the gloves anywhere. As my frustration was mounting, my eyes
landed on something that brought peace to my boiling aggravation: another
employee in his store vest coming my way.
“Sir,” I said, “I was told that I could find vinyl gloves in this
section.”
Without missing a step, and giving me only a slight glance, he said, “I
am off the clock. I can’t help
you.” And he walked right by me. Immediately, my blood temperature
soared! So, I spent another ten
minutes scouring the cleaning section aisles….and no gloves to be found. With 20 minutes of hunting behind me,
and a wedding parting soon to await me to open the church doors, I gave up,
gloveless, and left with steam escaping from my ears. “I am off the clock.
I can’t help you.”
Of this, I am very glad: I
will never hear that from God.
Psalm 121
I lift up my eyes to the hills— from
where will my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and
earth.
He will not let your foot be
moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
He
who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord
is your shade at your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor
the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from
all evil; he will keep your life.
The Lord will keep
your going out and
your coming in
from this time on and for evermore.
Unlike some store employees, God is never off the clock, and good thing,
because life is full of far more perplexing things than trying to find a box of
vinyl gloves…things that you and I encounter every day…and every night. When I am lost…when I am confused…when
I am struggling…when I am scared…when I am overwhelmed…when I have blown
it…when I can’t even stand to look at myself in the mirror……God, like that
employee, comes to me…but unlike that employee, God doesn’t watch the clock,
instead God sees the anxiety and frustration in my eyes, and he takes ahold of
me and says, “Here, let me help you.”
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace, (ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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