Parking lot passion: part 2

As luck would have it, I actually overshot the doughnut place and had to turn around in the parking lot of a grocery store I used to frequent when I lived in the neighborhood. I did a bit of shopping, a gallon of milk, some juice, nothing exciting, and headed to the check out where a woman --the only other customer in the store-- was loading a huge amount of spaghetti sauce onto the belt and telling the clerk she'd come back and buy the spaghetti noodles tomorrow, since she was short.

She was buying them for a spaghetti dinner for a women's prayer group she runs through a Baptist church on the East side of town. We chatted a bit in line, I offered to buy the noodles for her and she accepted. She asked me "where do you church" and I told her. She said "you know, some people say 'pay it forward'…I say 'God is good.'"

The story would be great, if a little self-serving, if it ended here. Thankfully, it doesn't.

I wheeled my grocery cart towards the car and began loading my groceries into the front seat. Marilyn --that was the woman's name-- came up to me and asked "Can we pray?" Contrary to my straight-laced Anglican leanings it was the most natural thing in the world as we held hands in the Albertson's parking lot and prayed. She spoke beautifully, a lyrical river of prayer and praise that seems to flow naturally from the Black Baptist church. Several minutes later we were both crying, our hearts transformed in the spirit, brought together by a God who died for us both and lives through us all.

Amen.