A devastating event occurred in the life of my almost three year old yesterday. We ran out of Triscuits. Those tasty rosemary and olive oil crackers that make his little heart sing were not available to him. He was so distraught. Good mother that I am I took him to the grocery store to pick up a few boxes. By a few, I mean piles. I not-so-secretly love them too. As we wrapped up our trip with grapes, crackers and a magazine in hand I was met at the check-out line by a very kind man who told me he had held a place for the lady behind him as she went to the bathroom. This was the beginning of the longest part of my day. The adventure that was getting these stupid crackers home.
After five minutes of waiting, I began to put my things on the long belt {leaving ample space should she return} and began to wonder if indeed she was coming back. She came back all right. She came back and nearly plowed into me. Then she pushed all of my things into a pile and began going through them {to see if I had found anything she might’ve liked that she missed}. After all of her things got rung through she then demanded that the check out lady give her 4 dollars. From where I am not sure but the manager came over twice and 5 different transactions occurred. It was the single most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen. She was seemingly unaware of anyone else around her and was extraordinarily demanding to the staff.
As I stood there I silently cursed my morning Bible sessions. A few mornings ago I found myself in the letters to the Galatians and have been mulling over this passage since. “By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. There is no law against such things.” {Galatians 5:22-23}. I’ve been mulling it over because as I read it I thought to myself ‘You know the thing I have to work on here is probably patience’. Patience. And here I am presented with a golden opportunity for me in which to work on it. *SIGH*
Having my personal space invaded, my things messed up, my time wasted and then watching this lady treat the employee poorly tested my patience. What I wanted to do was tell her to stop being rude and perhaps be aware of those around her. What I wound up doing was talking to the people behind me who were also agitated by what was going on. In talking to them, we shared some laughs. The people behind them began laughing too. Soon we had a whole line up of people {4 carts long} in better spirits and when we finally began to check out the employee noticeably relaxed and began to share her stories of difficult customers with me. We all left feeling pretty good. I guess you could say that patience does pay off.
This is the trouble with being Christian. What you want to do and what you should do doesn’t always match but it does pay off. Faith doesn’t end on Sundays after church. It continues on throughout the week and often the Bible speaks to you when you least want it to. This morning as I was reading the Letter of James I was reminded again how important it is to exercise what we say we believe as “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” {James 2:17}. Imagine what the world would be like if we all attempted to practice these fruits of the spirit and lived by the statement “Love your neighbor as yourself”. How many lives could we change by practicing our faith instead of just believing it.
