It’s been one of those days. I had many opportunities to sin today, but instead, I have laughed my way through.
Take tonight for instance: I worked all afternoon and evening. Before I got to go home, I had to swing by the store for egg bake ingredients for tomorrow’s MOPS meeting at 8:30am. Much baking was in store for my late Tuesday night. (And apparently much blogging while I wait for it to cook…)
So I was looking for the cheese (SuperOne still baffles me) at 9pm and I noticed a familiar face. “I know you,” I said to her. Turns out it is a friend I’ve made at a playtime at the Y up the street. She speaks Russian, which I love since we’ve been there, and works on a campus in Duluth so we have something in common there too.
She had 3 pounds of almonds and we started talking about them. She taught me almonds have cyanide in them, so we shouldn’t eat too many… It was fascinating, actually.
Somehow I mentioned I believed in a Creator and she mentioned she was an atheist. She has studied religions and we embarked on a 35 minute conversation about all sorts of things. She schooled me on a few things regarding Roman history, but I hope when I talked about the resurrection I got a few things right! We talked so long, she threw her groceries on top of the meat display!
All of a sudden, I noticed a priest walking by. I said to him, “hey we’re just talking about Jesus over here, Father.” Looking down at the meat section I said, “Right here in the pork department. How ironic!”
My friend laughed and said, “Well, mazel tov! My grandfather was a Rabbi!” She grabbed her groceries and we began to wrap up the conversation. Her cell phone had been ringing for about 10 minutes, so she was in the process of calling that person back when she said, “you should call me sometime!” I love bold people! I got her number.
I kept shopping, looking for the bread section. An employee helped me find it. SuperOne has a whole aisle dedicated to the funniest two items: bread and water. (America: really?! A whole aisle for water?!?!) Guess who else needed bread? The priest. I said to them both, “Isn’t it funny these two things are in the same row? I guess it’s all we need. Well, actually, Jesus said we don’t live by bread alone…”
And of course the priest finished the quote for me. We proceeded to talk about the Jew in the pork section, evangelism and having a personal relationship with God as we walked to the checkout. We got our clerks in on the deal and at some point, I said, “I feel like I just lived a Seinfeld episode.”
One clerk says, “my dad watches Seinfeld.”
Thanks. Ok, so I’m old.
Not sure how to end this funny story, but even as I type I smile. It sounds like a joke: An evangelical, a Jew and a priest stand in the pork section…
Or maybe it’s a parable?