The Pastor's Page

The Grocery Store Clerk

Len Kageler tells the story of a grocery store clerk named, Jim Davis, who loved his job. He prided himself on his good work, but one of his pet peeves was out-of-control toddlers and parents who yell at their kids, but do nothing to correct their children’s behavior.

One evening, Jim was checking out a customer who had a shopping cart full of groceries. While ringing up the sale, a child behind him began screaming very loudly, and an angry man responded by shouting, "Get down!"

What a jerk, thought Jim, without even looking up. He kept on calling out prices and moving the groceries past the scanner. The kid behind him was still crying, and again he heard the man yell, "Get down!" Sheesh. Talk about poor parenting, thought Jim. This guy is a total jerk. He kept on checking groceries without looking up.

Finally finishing the customer’s cart, Jim looked up and said, "That’ll be $89.95, ma’am." Seeing no one, he looked around and noticed that everyone, including his customer, was lying face down on the floor.

He turned around just in time to see a gunman leave the store. The checker behind him, still lying on the floor, calmly said, "Jim, you know the second time you heard ‘Get down,’ his gun was pointed right at your head."

We can get so accustomed to the noise of our culture and the distractions of the world that we hardly hear someone telling us something important. Sometimes we blow it off as if it were of no significance and other times we don’t hear or see what is going on at all. Sometimes it’s a warning of a friend or parent or child or spouse. At other times it may be the voice of God calling us. John Westerhoff, in his book The Spiritual Life, writes, "Prayer is a disciplined dedication to paying attention. Without the single-minded attentiveness of prayer we will rarely hear anything worth repeating or catch a vision worth asking anyone else to gaze upon."

With God’s help we can all use this summer to slow down and listen.

God bless,

Tom