To the editor:
There I stood in the dairy section of Hannaford’s grocery store, totally perplexed and transfixed holding a carton of eggs. I quickly became self-conscious and tried to get my bearings on what was so different about this time in a grocery store. How many thousands of times have I been in grocery stores before and never had this kind of experience? It was much like I had walked into that 1960s show “The Twilight Zone” and someone was trying to show or tell me something.
I soon gained my composure and started my walk again around the store just like it was the very first time I was seeing what a grocery store is all about. I couldn’t help but marvel at everything I saw and picked up. I got stuck in amazement in all the sections of the store. The produce department seemed to set my curiosity wild trying to understand where all these varieties of fruits and vegetables came from.
I couldn’t help but ask myself, who decided on all these varieties? It didn’t seem as though mankind could produce all these various selections without some kind of produce master blueprint. How was the first banana created with its natural easy-open giftwrap? Who decided on all the brands of apples and grapes? Some produce comes forth from trees or branches and others are nourished directly in the soil. Who made that decision?
Then I had to wonder how all this produce was sustained by the nutrients of the soil, then still, how was the soil crafted and who provided for the desperately needed nurturing of the sun and rain? I couldn’t look at anything without questioning: How did this come to be? Who created it and why? All that I viewed this day caused me to ponder the question that had only one possible answer.
Then I went to the cereal section of the store. I wasn’t long looking this section over before I was certain that the last thing the world needs is another breakfast cereal. I saw that mankind has done a wonderful job in manufacturing and marketing, but the foundation of all cereals is wheat, barley, oats, corn and rice, and the added touch of sugar in many of them. Where did these various grains come from? And I knew they never could have been created by man.
When I arrived at a favorite section of the store, the bakery and deli, I saw how man could take flour, sugar, milk and eggs and bring to existence so many delicious pastries, and in the deli, many pastas and salads that show man’s creative talent with the primary gifts we have received.
Now the full revelation of this day was starting to come to me. All that was in the grocery store was created by a sovereign creator … a creator who had always known and loved us and knew from the beginning of time all of our needs. For me, all the food in the store became gifts that had such great value in themselves.
Take, for example, just two items in the dairy section, the milk and eggs. They have both been with us since the beginning of civilization and they have such tremendous value nutritionally that I doubt that life could exist as we know it without these two foods.
Everything I held seemed to say to my spirit, “You are loved for all that you hold is my love for you.” It has to be true since nothing in the store was created by man. Everything owed its existence to an infinite creator who brought together even the existence of mankind itself, a mankind that today seemed very visibly loved and cared for.
Was this an answer to the prayer we so often say, “Come, Holy Spirit, and enkindle in me the fire of your love”? I hope so, for I will always be so much more grateful since the veil has been lifted from my eyes.
Now, when I go to the cash register with my cart full of gifts, I don’t really feel that I am paying for these gifts but giving a thanksgiving and gratitude donation. I can now walk away with a new confirmation of something I have always known. Simply said; we are all truly loved.
Peter Pinette
Woodland
