Patience… or obedience
We pick up one of our neighbors at a grocery store (which is about 10 miles from our house) every Sat night. There is a commuter bus stop at this store, so he rides the bus to the store, and we pick him up at the store and give him a ride home.
He gets out of work at different times each week, so he usually calls us when he is leaving work- and we know that he will arrive at the store in about an hour or so.
Last night he called us at 5:45 pm and told us that he would be at the store at about 7:00 pm. So we took mom for a ride with us, just to get her out of the house (in 17 degree weather!) because she has been feeling housebound lately.
It has been VERY cold here in North Carolina these days- only in the teens at night; and 30’s during the day. (I moved here from the Northeast 13 years ago to get away from this kind of cold weather.)
UGH!!
We arrived at the store at about 6:00 pm so that mom could look around and do some shopping before the impending snowstorm that has been forecast for Monday.
By the way, we may very well be the ONLY people who DO NOT buy meat, milk, bread and eggs when bad weather is forecast! (And that is because we don’t eat any of those products.)
But it seems to be an unspoken law in NC that when bad weather is forecast, you are supposed to go to the store and buy meat, milk, bread and eggs!
However, we noticed that the most popular grocery items that were being bought were soda, beer, and snack foods of all kinds. (Guess these people don’t know the rules, huh?!)
Anyway- sorry for rambling- back to the story at hand.
When we got to the store, we couldn’t help but notice the THREE policemen- who were stationed at both entry ways, and one out on the sidewalk.
Then I remembered that there were three people who were shot and killed in the parking lot of that store- which is in Charlotte, NC- last week. This was the reason for all of the new security measures put into place since the last time that we were there. (I guess it would actually make the headlines if three people were NOT shot and killed in Charlotte, but that’s another story….)
We bought some groceries, loaded them in the van, and went back inside the store.
We were standing inside the front doors looking outside- waiting for the bus to get there. (Mom is in a wheelchair, but we had to stand up, since there are no seats anywhere inside the store.)
7:00 pm…7:30 pm…8:00 pm…no bus. We knew that our friend should have been there by now- but where was he?
FINALLY- the bus came at 8:05- but he was not on it.
My husband and I had stationed ourselves with one of us standing in front of each door so that we could not possibly miss our friend when he came into the store.
(We missed him last week- and we all spent about 15 minutes walking around the store trying to find each other, so we were surely not going to let that happen again! And we had had a busy day and had not yet eaten, so we were hungry, cold and tired!)
Plus, we had already wandered the aisles this week- thinking that somehow we had not seen the bus pull up, but he was nowhere to be found.
Well- we didn’t realize that we had gained the attention of one of the police officers- uh, why would we? Three people- walking around the store for over two hours- and not buying anything! (The groceries that we HAD bought had been put in the van two hours ago.) Of course we WOULD NOT look suspicious. Who could they possibly think we were- Ma Barker and the gang?
I decided that I needed to let that officer know- in a non-suspicious way, of course- what we were doing waiting around the store for so long. So I walked over to her and asked her if she knew when the next bus was due in? She totally ignored me and just shook her head no.
I then very politely informed her that we were waiting to pick up a neighbor from the bus and take him home. And that the bus was very late.
8:30 PM
YEAH!!!!!!!!! The bus finally arrived. And we all made our connection with no problem.
Our friend told us that he had missed the first bus, then had gotten on the wrong one- and had to wait outside in 17 degree temperatures for an hour and a half for the right bus! Poor thing- he was shivering and freezing cold, wearing only his jacket- which is too small to zipper around his tummy, and no hat, gloves or scarf.
(NOTE: the North Carolina natives DO NOT know how to dress for cold weather- because they ARE NOT used to cold weather.) AND- our winters here have been WAY colder than normal for the last few years- guess it’s all that global warming going on, huh?!
Anyway, on the way home, he thanked us for waiting for him. He told us that he thought that we would have surely gone home by now.
We were shocked! How could you just leave someone to walk 10 miles home?
When we pulled in his driveway, he thanked us again for having the patience to wait for him.
While finally eating dinner at 10:00 pm, we talked about what he had said, and realized that we had not waited at the store for a person who was almost two hours late because we had patience, but rather, because we were simply obeying God’s Word.
Jesus said in:
Luke 6:31 And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
“Would” here means ‘want’. So Jesus is telling us that we should treat other people the way that we want them to treat us.
We were not exhibiting patience by waiting so long for our neighbor to get off the bus; we were just trying to obey God.
How about you? Do you try to always treat others the same way that you would want them to treat you? If not, try it- you might like it!
And what a different world we would live in if everyone would simply obey God’s Word.
God bless you as you seek God’s guidance and direction for your life.