Imagine shopping at the grocery store like you most likely do every week. Think about the list you write out or that's temporarily engrained into your mind. Am I out of milk? Do I need toilet tissue? How about more hummus? You venture through aisle after aisle and toss the items into your cart. The pile of groceries gets higher and higher as it consumes your germ infested metal cart you picked up in the parking spot beside your car.
The other day I was shopping at the grocery store and I saw the most bizarre occurrence. This gentleman walked away from his cart to search for items and as his back was turned this old lady - the typical purple haired lady that stood four feet tall, just able to see over her cart - parked her cart next to his and began picking items out of his cart. She surveyed the scene as she delicately placed items out of the way as she dug deep, every few seconds looking up to see if he was coming back. I was amazed by the buffoonery. It was as entertaining as it was joyfully intoxicating as I slowly moved in to get closer to the action. He would occasionally drop an item off at his cart as she stood near the cooler and when he'd walk away, his back turned from her, she'd go back at it and pick out items until he took his cart and walked off.
It's funny how a once self reliant society, forced to fight the good fight to get somewhere, has transformed into reliant of everyone else and dependent on getting it now. Entitled to the sweet rewards with half the labor. With the rise in technology and the demise of personal accountability, there's a direct association with the animosity we see on the roads, the discontent in our conversations and such hurtfulness broadcasted on the news. We've become accustomed to having items emailed to us and received in seconds. We are told that we can "get it your way" and have a million and one experts advertise their thoughts to us.
Like the lady in the grocery store, we've become too impatient to actually take the time to go about our way and achieve everything that we've put on to our figurative shopping list of life and accept that it might take some time. The woman, much like a lot of us, took a short cut to get things done quicker, but didn't even consider the effect it had on others, let alone how much time it would have taken to just push through it.
It's no surprise to me today in my life that I've grown so impatient and weak of heart that I often forget that in time good things happen, especially in terms of conquering even the weakest moments in my life. That if I trust in the Lord, through the good and the bad, I'll be able to follow that righteous path set forth. It is a simple, yet daunting task, to humble my heart and open my eyes to what it is I'm called to live out in my life. Just focus on the next three seconds and allow things to happen as they come, but never losing faith in what it is I'm to do.
This lesson I learned in the grocery store was a wonderful for me to think about as I prepare for Lent. A time in which we are called to give of ourselves in prayer, alms giving and fasting. To fast from the things that take us away from growing closer in faith and those things we consume our lives with the most. To give up alms so that we love others, by putting them before our own selves and to always give thanks through simple conversations with the Lord in prayer. It is in Lent that we remember that we're called to put to rest our pride and give thanks for what truly means most: life. The life that was sacrificed that we may live and the life that we've been called to live out. That instead of growing jealous and picking and choosing from what's in someone else's cart, we give thanks for the things we've been given and that we've collected in our own. That we humbly open our hearts for a Love that is so great. So pure. So authentic. For now is the time we focus on all the things we have jotted down on our shopping list and we fine tune the things we really think we need on it.
(This sounded so good in my head, but...)
Until next time...
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