A Cart with Good Wheels

I went to the store last week and I pulled a shopping cart from the line of carts.  I started my adventure into the store, pushing my cart, waiting to see and hear what this particular cart would do.  I exaggerate not; most of the carts I get usually have a noisy limp.  As a rule, one of the four wheels won’t turn or won’t swivel or won’t roll smoothly for some reason, and the dysfunctional wheel usually comes with a loud and obnoxious noise that will draw the attention of other shoppers to you as you make your way down the aisles.  Of course, their shopping carts usually have an issue as well, but these issues do seem to come in varying degrees of annoyance, so I suppose shoppers are making comparisons amongst themselves, some of them thinking, “Well I guess it could have been worse.” 

But on that particular occasion last week I happened to be the lucky one millionth shopper (or something like that) that got a cart with four good wheels.  I pushed and listened, pushed more and listened, but nothing, no inappropriate noise was coming from the cart’s wheels.  With that discovery, I froze for a moment.  I wasn’t exactly sure what to do.  On one hand I expected a supervisor to come and take the cart back, explaining it was reserved for the employee of the month.  On the other hand I expected lights to start flashing, balloons and confetti to start falling, and employees to start singing to me like servers at a restaurant serenading a patron having a birthday.  There was none of that.  Just your basic shopping trip followed from there, but I wanted to tell you about the good thing that happened so you’d know it is possible.

I’m going back to the store this afternoon.  No great expectations, but I’m more hopeful as a result of my last experience.  What I’m thinking is that grace happens.  It doesn’t exactly say it that way in the Bible, but it’s true, grace happens, sometimes pertaining to stuff more important than wheels on carts.  It usually happens without fanfare, but it happens.  And knowing that, may you be more hopeful as you go about your day.

The Scorpion and the Frog

You may have heard the fable about the scorpion and the frog.  It goes like this: A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too."  The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"  Replies the scorpion: "It’s my nature..."

People can feel like the scorpion.  We can feel like certain negative habits or tendencies we possess are just our nature and there’s nothing we can do about it, “even if my life depended on it.”  Or we might think other people to be “scorpions”, possessing a destructive nature that forecloses on any potential for good that might have come their way.  So why bother?

But people are not scorpions.  People are better than that.  People can weigh alternatives.  People can learn.  People can make choices, new choices, different choices, better choices.  People can change. God can help.

In the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life and throughout the records of His teaching it becomes clear that while on earth in the flesh He operated completely under this assumption.  He was fully convinced that people could change and that He could help.  He devoted His earthly life and death to that conviction.

People should be compared to scorpions?  It’s not in the Bible.  The Bible is clear that people are not to be confused with scorpions.  People are made of better stuff than that.  People can change.  People can be “born again.”  People can be redeemed.