Socially Distanced at HEB
A reflection from Pastor Jim.
Kelley and I were at HEB in the checkout lane just right after they installed the Plexiglas protectors. Our checker was busy scanning our items, and a young lady was sacking for us. I instinctively moved toward the cart to help her, since that’s what I always do, but when I did, she literally jumped back as if I was attacking her with a ripe banana. Her response shocked me, I apologized and stepped back behind the Plexiglas, the bananas intact, but my feelings a little bruised, my mind trying to process what had just happened.
The new policies at HEB are designed to keep shoppers at a certain distance, six feet to be exact, so that any germs we might have, don’t fly onto an innocent recipient. I appreciate that mutual concern for public health.
In analyzing the appropriate responses from our young grocery sacker at HEB, I saw a correlation between her actions and the actions of a Christ follower seeking to avoid sin. The dynamics are very similar are they not? Both our cart sacker, and the Christ seeker, are trying to avoid an enemy that they can’t see, they can’t hear, and they can’t locate.
Let’s breakdown the reactions of our sweet sacker. Two actions observed, one assumed.
Recoil -She recoiled when I came near, to mitigate any chance of infection.
Retreat-She retreated to a safe place behind the Plexiglas, 6 feet away.
Remember-Obviously, I couldn’t read her mind, but I could read her face, and it said, “Remember, germs are bad, distance is good, health is good”
She was practicing in a physical sense when faced with a threat of the unseen COVID virus, what God’s people are to do in a spiritual sense, when faced with the unseen virus of sin:
You and I are to Recoil when we see sin rising up in ourselves:
“let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
You and I as God’s people, are to Retreat to our safe place: to Christ Himself:
2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
You and I are to Remember God’s word and keep it stored up in us, as an antidote to sin:
Our Biblically informed hearts should be saying, “Remember sin is bad, therefore distance from sin is good, and God is good, and a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him”
I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Ps119
I appreciate HEB for training their staff in basic precautions to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus. I thanked my sacker as we left, and said a silent prayer for her as we walked out.
Someone once prayed for me when I was an unknowing carrier of the global virus called sin.
When I broke God’s law, I lost immunity to that virus, and the only One who could save me was the only human who never sinned. At one point as a teenager, God used unbearable anguish and torment to cause me to look to Him. He began a process of changing me, and cleansing me that goes on even to today. I pray that He would use the discomfort of this world-wide virus to do the same in thousands across the world.
While we don’t know exactly what God is doing in this Pandemic, His word does reveal many examples of how He brings beauty out of ugliness. We could begin with the Cross at Calvary on Easter day. God could have social distanced us because of our rebellion against Him, but instead, at great pain and cost to Himself, He endured the cross in our place, in order to redeem a great multitude from every tribe and nation.
CS Lewis once famously said that “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
Temporal pain can teach eternal lessons, and the classroom can be as close as your local HEB.