"For this is the Will of God...Concerning You" (who grocery shop)

In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

I Thess. 5:18



It was in the grocery store (Aldi, to be exact) that I found myself talking to myself yet again. If you're familiar with this discount food store, you know the pace is quick, the lines are long, and the customers aren't exactly well-off. (Or if they are, they choose to spend their dough on things other than name brand food.)

So there I was, checking out, loading up my mountains of food onto the conveyor belt. (I had been so busy the last 2 weeks of May that I hadn't shopped. I was putting meals together okay, but we had lots of repeats.)

I don't know about you, but I get self-conscious when I'm putting food on the conveyor belt. I feel like I'm being judged. Judged for my food choices, for my abundance (I never go into Aldi for just a few things because it isn't exactly real close to home), for the way I try to organize food as I put it on the belt so that packing up is easier (puh-LEASE, lady, just throw it on there!). Maybe this is all my imagination, but I've judged others so I know that, according to Matthew 7, I've been judged by the same measure.

I try to avoid eye contact when I'm feeling judged.

But this last time I felt the courage to look up at the lady behind me and say with a smile, "I'm almost there." She smiled back and said, "Take your time. I'm in no hurry." Her niceness disarmed me.

I had been telling myself, while feeling nervous and anxious, while arranging all the cold food together, and the canned foods together, "This never ends. Over and over, week after week, year after year, child after child, you've done this same routine. Plan for food, drive for food, make endless choices about food, organize your food, unload the food, pay for the food, load the food, bring the food home, put the food away, cook the food, run out of food, plan for more food, drive...." Twenty-two years of this. I was too nervous to do the math, but I'm sure my grocery trips are in the thousands.

Then it was like God tapped me. "Be thankful," He whispered. And suddenly I started thinking thoughts like, "You're right, God. I am thankful for all the choices. I am thankful for the freshness. I am thankful for the money. I am thankful for the mind to make decisions. I am thankful for the health that I can get out and do this. I am thankful for every mouth I have to feed. I am thankful I enjoy cooking."



Before I knew it, I had swiped my debit card and was standing at the bagging counter...you guessed it, organizing my food again! Sorting it, packing it, pushing it to the van.

Instead of just concentrating on the first part of the verse, "In everything give thanks," I think I'll also remember the last part: "concerning you." When it comes to the humdrum, seemingly endless routines of life, I want to start thinking in the mundane moments that being thankful is being in the will of God concerning me, rather than concerning myself with what others might be thinking of me. Certainly takes the self-consciousness out of the cart and brings the God-consciousness to the conveyor belt.