The best 25c ever spent!

In Lancaster County we have a grocery store called Aldi’s, part of a larger chain. In order to keep the cost of groceries down, customers need to bring quarters to unlock the shopping carts and bring their own shopping bags. My wife and I regularly shop there and I have found myself being in the store without a quarter and having to try and find empty boxes around the store to carry my groceries in.

 The Holy Spirit put on my heart the idea about turning up one evening to the store with a handful of quarters.  I arrived and began to wonder if this was really needed and I felt a resounding yes as I say two elderly ladies struggling by my car carrying groceries in half broken boxes. So I joyfully jumped out of my car and headed for the store.

Everybody who needed a cart was joyous in receiving the free cart. What I learned early on was that this was going to be more than anything a time to pray for everybody I saw walking in and out of the store. It was an incredible experience praying for people I don’t know or may never meet again. I was starting to feel like this was a waste of time, even though I was praying for so many people, simply because no one asked me why I was doing what I was doing. At just the right time, a mother and child came to the grocery store, I gave them the free cart, they actually had no change for their own cart. When she exited the store after taking the groceries to her car, her son came back and gave me the cart and I gave him the quarter. He looked confused, as he should have been because he knew he did not pay a quarter in the first place. It was then the mother asked me: “I don’t understand, why are you doing this?” Finally I had the chance. I said to her “because I love Jesus and I want to serve people”, she replied “I thought so.” She got in the car with her son and drove off.

There was no deep time of sharing the gospel with anyone. What the Lord Jesus did remind me of was that I have a role to play in evangelism. I have no idea what role I will play in the life of that mother and child. Maybe she has Christian friends who had tried to share the gospel with her and she wanted to see proof that God loves her, maybe all God wanted me to do was to be Christian who cared and valued her by serving.  I will never know and I am okay with that. 

It was the best 25c I ever spent!