After dinner a few nights ago, I went to the grocery store. I needed groceries, but I also wanted to finally bring my huge bag of spare coins to the store’s coins-to-dollars machine. The machine looked complicated, so I asked for help. They pointed me to a manager. She was busy, so I waited, and I watched her as I waited. She seemed tired in a been-there-done-that, same-old-same-old kind of way. When she was free, I handed her the bag of coins and watched as she slowly poured them into a narrow slot in the mysterious machine, spreading them back and forth, back and forth. I made a few attempts at conversation, but she was elsewhere. At one point, I thanked her and said I could finish, but she said, no, this machine gets stuck unless you know what you’re doing. So we stood side by side, staring at the steady stream of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters collected over the years from my pockets and purses. She never looked at me. When she was finished, I said thank-you, but she was already walking away.
Then I heard a thought: “Flowers. She would like flowers.” So I bought a little pot of yellow-faced flowers, and I found her and handed them to her. “What? For me?” In a single surprise-moment, the sun in her came out. Her face was shining. Our eyes met, and hers sparkled. I guess mine did, too. I drove home that night under a freer sky.
"How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it. . . . You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theater in which your own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers." G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
“Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow.” Matthew 6:34 The Message