Audrey and I got up around 7:30am (which is quite late for us–normally 6am). I have quite a hefty to-do list as we prepare and pack for the family reunion. Got a lot done last evening and I told myself that we would get out of the house early this morning to do the last of the grocery shopping while no one is out. We get to Jewel around 8:30am, maybe. I get everything I need while Audrey rolls around in one of those huge shopping carts with the little kid car in the front (I am embarrassed to say I use those). We were done within a half hour and I pull up in my pink car shopping cart and empty all the contents on to the conveyor belt (including four 24 packs of pop) and then they announce that all their cash registers are down and their system won’t be coming back up any time soon.

You have got to be kidding me!

I try to maintain a composure of patience, peace, go with the flow kind of thing.

It doesn’t last long. I start interceding, “Jesus, please get these machines working. Intervene in the process and speed it up.”

Nothing happens for about 10 minutes. Then they tell us (as we are all bunching up with our very full shopping carts) that they can take cash only in 2 of the self check out lines. I take Audrey to the cash machine, get money out, and go back and wait.

By this point I have been waiting at least 20 minutes. I have lost the previously mentioned “composure” and am irritated. Audrey is saying, “more, more” in her cute little voice, clearly hungry. I am thirsty and want to get home to get going on my to-do list.

All of a sudden a tall man walks up with two of those very bad, full of sugar and fat, snack boxes (like little debbies or moonpies). You get the drift. And he cuts right in front of me. And you all know me, I said something. Something to the effect of sir, we are all waiting here. In fact, many of us have been waiting for 20 minutes or more. He starts to argue with me and then is raising his voice that there are two lines. I said no there are not. One line. Get in the back of the line, buddy! He kept challenging me. I kept telling him I am taking the next self check out station. Back off buddy.

And this is where it gets interesting and why I even bother to post it on my blog.

I say to the woman who clearly is in authority and is directing the chaos (I even use her real name I see on her nametag), “Jackie, could you please tell this man that there is a line and that we have all been waiting and he needs to join us at the end of the line.” She does not even acknowledge me when she sees who is involved in this dispute and says something to all the fellow coworkers like, “I am not going to police this one.” And then she spots an actual police officer at the customer service desk and shouts over to him that we might need some policing. I was fuming!

And it occurred to me. I am white. She is black. And the man with the snack boxes is black. I think the situation might have gone down differently if she looked up and saw two white people standing there. Or even two black people standing there. She didn’t want to get involved and in the end (in her passive way) she sided with her brother. It felt like reverse discrimination and I have rarely felt that.

In times like these, I say thank you to God. You might wonder why. Well, in college I purposefully would put myself in situations where I was the minority so I could feel what it felt like to be the only one, the one that stands out, the one that doesn’t quite fit. And this situation in Jewel feels similar in some ways. Most of the time the white person wins out. Rarely does the black person win the battle of who goes next in line.

I walked out of there saying to myself, “hmmm”.

And my irritation and impatience melted away.

I listened to this book on tape driving my commute back and forth to work, up and down highway 41. And I was really, really surprised by how good it was. I remember a few years ago, Tanya mentioned to me that she really liked it. So I gave it a chance.

Now you need to know that it is written by a woman named Anne Rice who in my mind has always been an author associated with dark and evil stories about vampires, death and the underworld. I think I tried reading some of her previous books in high school but quickly discovered I did not jive with her darkness.

As you can imagine, I was curious (maybe suspicious is a better word) about her (the dark and evil author) writing a book about Jesus.

Well, it is a stunning portrayal of the life of Jesus as a small boy. I loved it! I feel like I was able to see Jesus in a new light, in a new way that I haven’t seen him before. So much of the story of Jesus that is recorded in Scripture is all about his adult years. But she does an amazing job bring the boy of Jesus to life. She is a historian in a lot of ways and at the end she tells some of her story of how she came to write this book. I will let you enjoy that part on your own, but it is a good story of how God came in and transformed her and her writing.

Some things I loved about the book:
1) I really liked how she just wrote a snapshot of sorts of 2-3 years of Jesus life as he was beginning to grapple and understand who he really was, the Son of God. To see him as fragile and confused and little boyish was wonderful and interesting.
2) As I said before, she did a marvelous job capturing the culture and setting of what life was like for Jesus and his family. It was well portrayed how much Jews were persecuted and the powerful hand that Rome used to squish people.
3) I loved a thread she weaved about rememembering. Jesus’ aunts and uncles would always say to him and the other children when something signficant would happen, “Remember this.” Forcing them to make a conscious choice to imprint something into their hearts, minds and memories. I want to do that with my children.
4) I really enjoyed the Holy Spirit encounters Jesus had and how he would process them and try to understand them as a small boy. I especially loved the scene where Jesus is standing behind his uncle in the Jordan river after finally returning to Israel from Eygypt. His uncle was very ill and about to die and a small but powerful prayer escapes from Jesus’ heart that changes his uncle forever. It is a beautiful scene and I won’t give too much more away. Or Jesus seeing angels for the first time….oooh.
5) And I was reminded anew of what it must have been like for Mary and Joseph, particularly Mary, coming back to Nazareth and being known as a woman who had an illegitimate child (supposedly) and the shame their entire family experienced interacting with other people in the community.

Good book.
I recommend it.