To be one with each other
On this first day of January in the year of Christ 2020, I begin the journey of this blog. In other places at other times I will explain myself (and fix my header picture) but today I will tell a short story.
This morning, as the flurries gently floated through the air, I stopped at my favorite gas station to make a fresh start in the year with my car gassed up. The usual guy was there at the pump, an older man, muffled up in the custom of his middle eastern country. I'm not sure of his age, he looks anywhere between 50 and 70 years that have not been kind to him. He is out in all kinds of weather and that shows too on his face. But he always has a pleasant greeting, "Hello" and he nods as if by saying "fill it regular, please" I have told him the story of my life. He never smiles.
This morning, though, it was different. The man in the car in front of me was rude. He was in a hurry, you see, and after virtually flinging his $50 bill in the pump man's face he seemed to expect the man to produce change magically in a quarter of a second. My pump man (I promise I will learn his name) counts the change carefully and took, oh, a full minute and a half to return the change. The man peeled out of the station as if in Le Mans.
Then he came to me, not upset but merely resigned, as if that was the story of his life. "Fill it regular, please," I said with a resigned smile, signaling that I knew and was somehow sorry (because I was) for the way he had been treated. He smiled back, the first time I had seen him smile in a year. "Happy New Year," he said. And we shook hands.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one...Galatians, 3:28
This morning, as the flurries gently floated through the air, I stopped at my favorite gas station to make a fresh start in the year with my car gassed up. The usual guy was there at the pump, an older man, muffled up in the custom of his middle eastern country. I'm not sure of his age, he looks anywhere between 50 and 70 years that have not been kind to him. He is out in all kinds of weather and that shows too on his face. But he always has a pleasant greeting, "Hello" and he nods as if by saying "fill it regular, please" I have told him the story of my life. He never smiles.
This morning, though, it was different. The man in the car in front of me was rude. He was in a hurry, you see, and after virtually flinging his $50 bill in the pump man's face he seemed to expect the man to produce change magically in a quarter of a second. My pump man (I promise I will learn his name) counts the change carefully and took, oh, a full minute and a half to return the change. The man peeled out of the station as if in Le Mans.
Then he came to me, not upset but merely resigned, as if that was the story of his life. "Fill it regular, please," I said with a resigned smile, signaling that I knew and was somehow sorry (because I was) for the way he had been treated. He smiled back, the first time I had seen him smile in a year. "Happy New Year," he said. And we shook hands.
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one...Galatians, 3:28
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