The Shopping Cart – Part 2

Just a few days after the shopping cart experience I related in a recent post I returned to Walmart. I selected a cart from the group at the entrance, tested it by rolling it back and forth and sideways, and satisfied that the wheels were good I embarked on my shopping quest.

For the first few aisles things went smoothly…until…thump, thump, thump. I couldn’t believe it. I decided to immediately return to the store entrance and get another cart. When I got there I saw a cart that a lady had just returned on her way out of the store, so I thought, “I’ll take that cart, it must work because she had a few bags of merchandise, if it hadn’t worked she wouldn’t have used it.”

For the first few aisles things went smoothly and I congratulated myself on switching carts. But then…thump, thump, thump. How could this be? Were the shopping-cart gods conspiring against me? Were they making sport? Did they have an office pool on Mt. Olympus to see how many carts I would go through before giving up?

I pushed my cart toward a mother with a young child in the child’s seat of her cart, as my cart approached with a “thump, thump, thump” and squeaks and groans the child started crying and the mother looked at me as if to say, “Couldn’t you be more considerate of others? You are frightening my child.”

I saw a group of employees hiding behind a display and looking at me. I am sure I heard one of them say, “That’s the guy who was in here last week who abandoned his cart – you’d think he’d learn.”

Well, you would think they’d number the carts the way NASCAR numbers cars, that way the poor customer would have some defense. We could have a smartphone app that tracks bad carts and warns us not to use number 54, or 35, or 678.

After a few more aisles I did what any self-respecting shopper would do, I once again left my cart, picked up my merchandise, and headed to a checkout line. At this rate I’ll be making multiple trips in and out of the store on each visit.

That night I awoke at 3:23 AM, I was certain I heard “thump, thump, thump.”

The Shopping Cart

I often take a shopping cart from the parking lot into the store for two reasons, one is that I am saving a store employee a little work, and the other is that with the cart in front of me that cars are more likely to let me traverse the crosswalk. With this in mind I took a shopping cart from the cart corral in Wal-Mart’s parking lot into the store and started shopping for a few items.

At first the cart was fine, but then the right front wheel began to turn and squeak and rumbled and it was as if I was driving over logs – and the noise! I turned the cart this way and that, thinking that the right combination of twists and turns would remedy the problem – to no avail.

Unfortunately the few items I needed were at opposite ends of the store. Well, I would do my best to make it from the hardware section to the grocery section. It got worse. I used a store phone to call customer service to request that someone bring me another cart, no one answered. Then, since we have road service through our insurance company, I called the 800 number only to have the person on the other end hang up as I was explaining my dilemma.

Thump, thump, thump went the cart. I was halfway through the store, from the hardware section to the grocery section. Thump, thump, thump went the cart. (You would think they’d supply spare wheels for such occasions). I still had to go to the back end of the grocery section and then to the front of the store. I was surprised the thump thump thump wasn’t registering on the Richter scale. There were Gremlins in the wheel. I needed a NASCAR pit crew to change this tire but there were none to be found. There were employees hiding behind displays looking and laughing. Security was having a hoot observing me on cameras – no doubt betting on whether I would make it to the front of the store with the cart. I was amazed that the thump thump thump didn’t crack the floor tile. I was surprised that the vibrations from the thump thump thump hadn’t caused pyramids of merchandise to cascade to the floor burying customers and employees under an avalanche of Walmart falling prices.

A filling was jarred out of a tooth.

I stopped the cart. Gathered what I had in my arms. Quickly walked to the grocery section and picked up one more item, found the cashier with the shortest line, and mercifully ended my travail without dropping anything.

I got in the car and called the dentist. “I just had a filling fall out while I was shopping. It was the strangest thing,” I told the receptionist.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Mind if I ask what store?”

“Walmart.”

“I bet it was the shopping cart wheel, we get a lot of those.”

This Didn’t Feel Right Either

The day that I attended the Celebration of Life service began with a men’s breakfast at another church, not the church I attended for the Celebration of Life. As with the latter church, the former church is a church that believes that the Bible is the Word of God. The food was good, the conversation was good; I was pleasantly surprised when a man sat down at my table and reintroduced himself to me as someone who had been in a small group with me at least 20 years ago.

When the food portion of our morning was concluded a speaker began a presentation – no Bible, no Biblical content, no focus on Jesus. Where is the public reading of Scripture? The presentation was “self-help” – when will we learn that only Christ and His Word is transformative?

Where is our passion for the Word of God? We desperately need to regain Biblical literacy; part of this recovery must be modeling the Bible in our leadership, our teaching, our preaching, our gatherings, and our conversation. Our generation, our society, needs the transcendent Word of God. The argument that, “I don’t use the Bible when I’m talking to unbelievers because it doesn’t mean anything to them”, is not a Biblical argument – how will others believe the Gospel if they don’t hear the Gospel, and how will they hear the Gospel if it isn’t the Biblical Gospel, and how will they hear the Biblical Gospel if it isn’t from the Bible?

Of course we can use contemporary words and images and concepts in our communication, but they must be clothed with Scripture, built on Scripture, and submitted to Scripture. Everything we do in terms of contemporary concepts and images and words must be so that we can share and proclaim and communicate the Bible, the Word of God.

If we aren’t communicating the Bible when we gather as believers, it isn’t likely we are going to communicate the Bible when we are scattered in the world at work, at play, or in our communities.

Have we forgotten that this is a matter of life and death? This isn’t about marketing, it isn’t about being “relevant” in an earthly sense – it is about eternity.