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| Elijah and I sweating after a grocery trip. |
I’m standing in the grocery line, sweat dripping down my neck as if i’m making my own rain cloud. The power is off at the mall, and though the generator is on, the air cons are not being used.
The shopping carts are too small to hold my baby plus the items on my list. I go to the check-out lane to unload and get things moving. Then I get a second basket and zoom around the store, more sweaty yet, trying to find my last needed items.
When I get back to the line, there are my checked groceries in plastic bags at the end of lane 22, but why are there two other shopping women blocking me from the counter? They just cut in front of me and left me and my now fussy hungry baby to wait even longer to finish the Saturday sauna shopping spree.
The cashier doesn’t seem to care that I need to finish my shopping before nap time. She doesn’t seem to notice that I am soaking wet from sweat, and she doesn’t mind that I now have to wait for more customers to finish before me. Why did she not inform the others that I was coming back in just a moment?
My heart starts fuming more steam than my body is perspiring. Then a miracle happens. I remember to pray. “Lord, in this moment, how can I love this lady? How can I see the Gospel at work here in the check out lane?”
I want to become the kind of person that doesn’t get impatient in the check-out line. I want to grow in learning to sweat with a smile on and not to expect things to run smoothly and efficiently.
I’m not there yet. BUT GOD gives me more grace.
I remember Ephesians 2 that reminds me in my own flesh my heart does not love the lady. In my own sinful nature I want to use my shopping cart as a bumper car to push my way past to the two line-cutting ladies.
“As for you, you were dead
in your transgressions and sins...
All of us also lived among them at one time,
gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature...”
Ephesians 2.1 & 3
Yet, the Gospel is growing deeper roots in my heart. By faith, God gives me more grace in that moment. He reminds me that HE loves all the ladies, as much as he loves me. He loves the uncaring cashier that wouldn’t save my place in line to get a few more items. He loves the pushy selfish ladies that barged their carts in front of my place, even though they themselves weren’t carrying hot and hungry babies.
And the greatest miracle is that he loves me enough to let me sweat, to let me stand in a long Saturday shopping line, and to let me grow in patience and grace so that I can grasp even more how rich is HIs mercy toward me.
“BUT because of his great love for us,
GOD,
who is rich is mercy,
made us alive with Christ
even when we were dead in transgressions--
it is BY GRACE you have been saved.”
Ephesians 2.4
I see it is by GRACE that God has made me spiritually alive. It is by grace that he gives me a willing heart to grow in patience and love. It is by grace that He shows me His love for the other women at the grocery store. It is by His grace that I stand in one place in silence, waiting my turn for the second time, rather than pushing my way to the front. By God’s GRACE I am growing in faith to trust Him more in these challenging days.
By faith, I am able to praise God for soaking me in sweat and for giving me patience rather than pushiness because I get the greater gift of growing in the knowledge of His abundant grace for me.
