Serve Somebody

I sat in the car outside Starbucks yesterday afternoon talking to a girlfriend. I was telling her how frustrated I was because I had learned that a bookstore that would be representing me at an event had informed me the day before that no one on staff intended to read the book they would be selling.

I was having a difficult time wrapping my head around that.

You regular readers of the blog know how much I advocate for Independent bookstores. One of my favorite movies of all time is the Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks flick You’ve Got Mail.

Anyway my girlfriend, who was trying to encourage me, told me that she knew exactly why the people who worked at this particular bookstore would be reluctant to read my book.

“You are a Christian,” she said. “And they are the most liberal of liberals.”

I told her I didn’t see how that applied since this wasn’t exactly Christian literature, whatever the heck that is.

My friend, who grew up a pastor’s daughter, went on to say that the irony is that sometimes the very people who reject Christians because they consider anyone who confesses Christ to be too narrow-minded, are themselves pretty narrow-minded.

Yes. It’s true being narrow-minded isn’t a trait reserved solely for those with a faith. Those without a faith can be equally guilty. I wrote about all that in Where’s Your Jesus Now?

We do not have to be religious to be wrong about all the ways we claim to be right.

I find that a lot of people would much rather be right than redeemed.

Anyway, at the time she was saying it my friend’s advice seemed as rationale as any other excuse I’d heard over the past 24 hours. So I said, Wouldn’t it be great if we rallied all the Christians in that community and blessed the socks off that bookstore by having everybody buy books from them? You may recall I suffer from these delusions from time to time. Remember when I was picking up trash in the field and thinking the whole town was going to turn out to help?

I blame these delusions on those musicals I watched as a child.

Whenever there is discord I always hope somehow we’ll all end up singing a song together.

Perhaps we will one day.

But as it turns out, sometimes we people do get it right

That whole grace thing.

Our buddy John in PDX sent me a link to a story about Patrick Greene, the San Antonia atheist who set out to protest  a nativity scene set up in front of a Texas courthouse. Greene was threatening a lawsuit but then he learned he had a health condition that could leave him blind.

A Baptist Church learned of Greene’s condition and donated money to help him. The woman who organized the donation said it was a great opportunity to extend God’s love to Greene, who was reportedly moved by the outpouring.

Not to be outdone, atheists got together and raised money for Greene, too.

It was a moment straight out of my delusions.

Atheists and Christians coming together to serve somebody.