Sunday Devotion- A God-moment at the Grocery

Janet Rubin


Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?


The man whose job it is to gather shopping carts from the parking lot exited the grocery store just as I did. As we squeezed side-by-side through the automatic doors, he remarked, “Next week’s the big two-two for me.”

For a moment he caught me by surprise, speaking to me as if he knew me. But I glanced up and remembered that this familiar-looking man had spoken to me before. We had passed in the parking lot a couple of weeks before Super bowl Sunday, and he’d said, “Greenbay’s goin to the Superbowl. No doubt about it.” He’d been wrong on that count. I frowned, trying to figure out what his current declaration meant. He couldn’t be turning twenty-two; he had to be in his forties or more likely fifties.

Soon enough he cleared up my confusion. “I’ll have been working here for twenty-two years!”

“Wow,” I exclaimed as I shoved my cart through the two-inch deep snow toward my mini-van. “Congratulations. That’s a lot of work you’ve done.” (No wonder the fellow looked familiar; I’d shopped there all my life, which meant I must have been seeing him since I was fourteen!)

I reached my van and opened the hatch, while the man began collecting carts, gathering them together like a cowboy rounding up cattle. “I come here and work hard every day,” he said proudly, “then I go home to a beautiful wife.”

Something stirred inside of me. The man was beaming. “God has blessed you,” I said, meaning it. “You have a good life.”

I piled my Fruit Loops and dog bones and Tide detergent into my van.

“We have a cockatiel named Spike, too. He’s little. Only about this big.” He took his hands off the cart he pushed to indicate the bird’s size.

“That’s cool,” I said. “I have two dogs, named Hunter and Murphy.”

Soon, my groceries were loaded. The man happily took my cart off my hands, and I headed for the driver’s side door, congratulating him again on his twenty-second anniversary. Just before I slammed my door, he hollered, “My name’s Bob, by the way. You’re welcome to visit this store anytime.”

It almost feels like I don’t need to spell out the spiritual lessons here. Does Bob know about Jesus? Maybe I’ll ask him next time I go shopping. Whether he does or not, he’s doing some things the Bible recommends far better than I am.

Bob is content with the life he has been given. He is thankful for his job, his wife and his cockatiel. He’s kind, reaching out to his fellow human beings. He is hard-working and joyful. “I come here and work hard every day,” he said. Can we say that?

I think about how goal-oriented we pre-published writers are. Sometimes it seems that everything is somewhere in the future, the contract-signing day we are living to see. And our happiness somehow hinges on that day coming to pass. My conversations are so often about the books I hope to publish, the degree I hope to earn, the career I hope to have. But God doesn’t want us to store up our treasures in barns or worry about tomorrow. He wants us to be content in every situation, to find pleasure in having worked hard today, and if we are blessed with a family, to treasure them. He doesn’t want us complaining, but rather giving thanks.

I confess that without really thinking about it, I’ve probably always looked down a bit on people like Bob, felt sorry for them. People whose mental capacity relegates them to jobs like grocery-bagging or cart-collecting, without hope of advancement. But as I drove away in my mini-van, I envied Bob. His attitude was so obviously superior to mine. He has acheived a level of contentment that few of us will see this side of heaven. God bless Bob.

Lord, I thank You for putting Bob in my path today. Make me content and thankful like him. Help me to be pleasant and cheerful and helpful. Help me to appreciate the job and family You’ve given me. Thanks for reminding me that it isn’t so much what you do as how you do it. Help me to do my work to the best of my ability, as unto you, and to find pleasure in doing so. Amen