Creating community at the check out.
How do we create community at the grocery store?
Watch our Truth in Two to discover one approach (full text below).
To everyone out there, I echo the sentiment, “Have a BLESSED day!”
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Picture Credit: Luke Renoe, Snappy Goat
FULL TEXT:
The store opened at 7 a.m. I was there at 7:02 a.m. Already there were people exiting the doors with grocery bags. With one hundred plus cars in the lot my first thought was I had just entered the parking space of a mega-church service. It was Sunday morning after all. New hours had been instituted because of the Covid-19 virus.
Since moving to Indianapolis, I have been going to the same grocery store for 15 years. Over that time, I have built simple community connections with some of the folks who work there. The conversations range from a smile, to a head nod, to a greeting, to an ongoing conversation, to full blown dialogues, most often at the check-out counter.
That morning was no different. One of those longstanding friendships is with a cashier who shares not only my love of food, but summer grass cutting, movies, and aisle 23 where in-store damaged goods can be bought at a discount. He happened to be working the check-out where I was purchasing my items. As I approached the front of the store. I wanted to ask how he was doing. Two days before, he had ended our brief conversation by saying “Please pray for us.” I had been doing just that.
I approached the self-checkout closest to his station. We exchanged smiles and informal greetings ending with my question, “How goes it today?” We discussed how hard it was for all the store employees right now. We talked about how he was “holding up” under the physical-emotional strain of his job. But as each person finished paying for their order, he would interrupt our chat with the same sendoff, “Have a blessed day!”
After a few of these genuine, kind comments he looked at me and said, “Some people might have been offended by my farewell in the past.” He looked wistfully at the floor, then back at me. “But I don’t think anyone is offended now.” My grocery store friend had summarized the change, the shift in public awareness with one simple, kind comment: “Have a blessed day.”
Perhaps, like me, you have been shopping at the same grocery store for years. Perhaps you have been greeting workers at your retailer. Perhaps those connections have become acquaintances. Perhaps it is time to say to your grocer, “Thank you for your hard work during these difficult days.” Tell them you are praying for them. Give encouragement. Honor their labor.
There was no mega-church meeting in my grocery store on that Sunday. No worship songs were sung. There was no preaching. But there was a simple human connection between two men of The Faith. We exchanged our final words for that store visit. And as I turned to go, I heard him say to another customer as they left, “Have a blessed day!” It was the best four-word sermon I have ever heard.
For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, President of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking truth wherever it’s found.