God Talks in Grocery Stores

“How do you know God’s speaking to you, Mama?” she asks, fiddling fingers, looking down. “I’ve never heard Him talk to me.” And before I can begin my answer, her twin, the more confident, brash blurts out, “God talks to me all the time – I can hear His voice.” “Really?” I say half joking, half serious. “Um, are you really sure it’s God?” “Mama,” she says in frustrated tone while rolling her eyes, “I’m sure it’s Him – I know it is.” “Well, when’s the last time He talked to you then, and what did He say?”

“Remember when we were in the store the other day and that little kid accidentally knocked over all those cans?” I didn’t remember, and why should I? Grocery stores are not the place for God to talk – they’re the place I get frustrated with rude shoppers and check-out girls, the place I feel my lack the most, the place I hate to go. “Well, God told me to help him – the little boy – so I went and picked up the cans for him.”

Maybe He’s not confined to sacred places, church walls. After all, He lives in me. I’m His temple, the place in which He chose to abide. Anywhere I am can be – is – holy, because He is always there. I am not good. I am not righteous. It is simply by His grace that I have the opportunity to choose. Will I choose to accept Him — to listen – even in the middle of the mundane? Will I consecrate myself to His words, His voice in the midst of the profane? His divine meets my everyday and I scarcely even recognize it at the point it happens. Often, it’s only after that I realize how truly present He was – is. He speaks everywhere. We have to make the choice to listen, to act. We can hear Him, even in aisles stacked high with beans and rice.

How often do I truly listen, entertain His desires in the middle of my common and ordinary? Each day is pregnant with potential and purpose – a chance to be His light to at least one. And isn't that what it's really about – just one – the little lost lamb, the small one surrounded by cans, toppled piles of trouble covering the ground all around?

I've put Him in a box high on a shelf reserved for special occasions, when all along He has wanted to come down, be heard in the everyday. I have desecrated that hallowed ground – His divinity in my heart. I haven't seen Him in the piles of laundry, heard Him in the hum of washing machines, but He is there, speaking through the simple, calling me to be thankful in the mundane, asking me to help someone, even if just one, with a kind word, an offer to pick up the cans – the baggage – an invitation to see Him, too.

God, help me hear You, even in the grocery store.