Customer Service

Yesterday as I waited at Wal-Mart's customer service desk, I realized how judgmental I can be.  The Wal-Mart employee behind the counter was holding a check in her right hand and the phone in her left, and I couldn't help but overhear the conversation. "Did you give your grandaughter a check to cash?"

"She's only got a sippy cup, but I noticed the notation at the bottom of the check.  It's for medicine, right?"

"She's gone to get more stuff, because she didn't have enough merchandise for me to cash the check."

"I'll see that she has some when she comes back."

A few minutes later, a woman with a little girl came back to the counter with a package of children's tylenol.

"This is all I could find," she said.  "This will have to do."

Immediately, I mentally berated her for taking advantage of her grandmother's generosity.  She just wants the money, I thought.  She's not interested in getting medicine for her daughter.  I bet she'll spend the rest of the money on whatever she wants.  Who knows what she'll do with it? She should be ashamed of taking advantage of an old lady.

My thoughts continued on that path for the rest of the day, and I'm ashamed to admit that I had no problems looking down on that poor woman.  It wasn't until much later that I suddenly realized how easily had I had snapped to judge her.  I don't know her situation or her needs.  I don't know why her grandmother wrote a check.  Maybe she needed to pay a doctor's bill.  Maybe she needed to buy groceries.  Maybe the only medicine the little girl needed was Tylenol.  Maybe she just needed some grace.

Far too often, I turn my nose up at the people who need help the most.  It's easier for me to cast judgment than it is to actually reach out and help.  If I think that I'm somehow better than them, then I won't feel responsible for helping them in their plight, but the truth is that I'm not better.  I am who I am because of the grace of God, for no other reason.  I lack nothing, but it's not because I deserve the life I live; it's because God has given it to me.  It's my duty to take what God has given me and use it for the good of others, but most of the time, I just use it for the good of myself.

If we Christians are ever going to reach the people who need God the most, we have to get over ourselves.  I'm not exempt from this challenge.  It's time to extend a little bit of grace and open my eyes to the needs around me.  Maybe I can do something to help.

Even Baptists Need Holy Week

Sometimes I wish I came from a more liturgical tradition.  The kind that allows the church calendar to dictate the rhythms of life and set the tone for worship.  Our church usually does a pretty good job of at least changing the fabric draped over the cross in the baptistry, but for some reason, Ash Wednesday came and went without a change in color.  Our cross still sports the bright red and gold colors of Christmas.  We'll celebrate Easter on Sunday, and I know for a fact that the cross will be arrayed in shimmering white, but I have really missed the purple cloth of Lent this year.

I grew up in traditional Southern Baptist churches, and I never knew that there were entire seasons built around Christmas and Easter.  I didn't know what Advent was until my grandmother died and we began celebrating Christmas at my aunt and uncle's house.  They, being good Episcopalians, place an Advent wreath in the middle of their dining table and light the candles throughout the season.  The wreath fascinated me, and from that moment on, I was intrigued by this other world of rich traditions that I knew nothing about.  As a teenager, most of my friends were Catholic, and their observance (or lack thereof) of Lent always grabbed my attention.  We Baptists didn't give up anything for Lent, and I really didn't see how abstaining from chocolate or Coke would have any affect on God at all.

Things have changed a bit since then, and I've come to appreciate and long for liturgical traditions.  The first year we were married, I dragged my husband to an Ash Wednesday service at the local Episcopal church.  The whole thing really weirded him out, but I loved it.  I felt connected to something larger than myself, and that year, I gave up blogging and social networking for Lent.  We light Advent candles at Christmas and read selected passages of Scripture together to help us remember and meditate on the season.

But it's a lot of work to do it on our own.  Sometimes I'm so caught up in myself that I forget to consider the season.  I'm ashamed to admit that Easter has taken me by surprise this year.  I don't feel prepared for Sunday morning.  I need the church to remind me of the season.  I need the purple cloth of Lent to turn my eyes toward the road to Jerusalem, and I need waving palm branches to center me at the onset of Holy Week.  Tomorrow is Maundy Thursday, and although we won't observe it in our church, I know that I need to feel the horror of Jesus' arrest and the trauma of his death on that Friday we call Good.  If I don't stop to feel the betrayal and grieve the death, I won't understand or appreciate the resurrection life we commemorate on Easter Sunday.

It's only through the death of Jesus that we can experience the resurrection.  His death was real, tragic, and painful.  I need to dwell on those things before I can celebrate and appreciate Easter Sunday because, as the prophet Isaiah wrote, "Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.  But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned - every one - to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:4-6).

Writing to Remember

Last night I spent a long time flipping through an old journal and remembering where I've been.  Reading the old memories and the old prayers helps me see how far I've come and how far I have yet to go.  The journal I read last night contains some of the most important moments of the past five years of my life.  It holds memories from the year I lived in Texas and the months preceding my wedding, my first year of marriage and the beginning of my work at Beeson.  I scribbled countless prayers, scripture verses and endless musings in those pages.  Sometimes I laughed.  Other times I cried.  But I always wrote to remember.

I'm ashamed to admit that I have a bad habit of losing my train of thought when I pray.  I start my silent prayers with good intentions but before I know it, I’m chasing rabbits down overgrown paths, and I forget not only what I was praying for but also that I was even praying to begin with.  Even worse, sometimes I forget the things that I pray about, and I have no way of knowing when God has answered my prayers.  I began writing my prayers down the summer after I graduated from high school.  I had kept a diary since the fifth grade, but that summer, something shifted in my relationship with God, and I began to write to him.  My diaries grew up with me, and they became journals, a written record of my spiritual life.

Remembering is a key to perseverance.  The book of Judges tells us that the people of Israel failed to remember the God who had delivered them, resulting in a gigantic mess.  Every time God raised up a new leader for them, they rallied and had a brief little revival.  But it didn’t take long for them to forget again, and the cycle repeated itself.

I don’t want to be like the people of Israel.  God forbid I forget the way he has worked in life.  Things are good right now, but I must remember that the peace in my present was wrought by pain in my past.  As I sift through the memories recorded in my journals, I cannot help but see God’s work.  The most difficult year of my life came when I was a junior at Mississippi State.  I became a prolific journal writer that year.  Every night I sat down and poured my aching heart out on paper.  It was a “sifting season” for me, a time when God stripped away one by one all the things I held dear.  God used those events, the things that I thought I could not handle, to mold me in ways I could not see if I had not written them down.

Time softens memories and takes the edge off emotions.  I’m on the other side of that heartache now.  When I pick up that particular journal to remember, I know that it will be a walk through sharp pain.  Change is never easy, and it was a year of change, but I rejoice when I read those wrenching prayers, because God is faithful, and he took his broken and bruised little girl and mended the damage.  I stand before you as a whole-hearted woman because God picked up the pieces of my life and put them back together in a way that is far better than the life I had built for myself.  That is something I don’t want to forget.

Sometimes it's disheartening to look at the journals and see that I still struggle with the same things.  I still wonder where I'm headed, and I still have to be reminded that the words of truth that God has spoken over me are really the only ones that matter.  Despite that, looking through the journals encourages me because they show me God's faithfulness in the midst of my insecurities.  I don't write for posterity's sake.  In fact, I've instructed my husband to burn the journals if I die.  I write to remember.  Because only when I've seen where I've been can I remember where I'm going.