Like A Prayer

The strangest thing just happened … A group of people just came into my store. Two young girls and an older gentleman.

One of the young ladies came up to my desk and was visibly nervous. She started prattling on about a scavenger hunt and was I sick? And could she help. It was very confusing.

I said “What? You’re on a scavenger hunt? What does that have to do with me being sick? I don’t understand.”

Then she clarified that they were on a “Spiritual Scavenger Hunt”. She explained that she was a Christian and that she prayed for words this morning and that God had given her and each of her friends a list of words to find today so they could spread the word of God.

NORMALLY I am really put off by this kind of in-your-face stuff but I found the girl interesting so when she told me she was a Christian – I told her I was a Jew and made her high-five me. 🙂

Honestly. I felt kind of trapped. I’m behind my desk. There is no way for me to get away from people who make me uncomfortable so I decided to engage with them and I asked her what words God gave her for her scavenger hunt.

Yellow. Hot Dog. Mustard. Baseball Hat. Sarah.

She told me that they had bumped into a man who was making hot dogs and he was wearing a yellow shirt and a baseball hat and offered mustard as a condiment.  🙂 After they spoke to him they were walking down the street and saw the name of my store and decided to come in. She asked me if I wanted her to pray for me.

Normally overt expressions of fire and brimstone religion makes me uncomfortable but lately I’ve started to think about prayer and how this kind of Christian prayer is really just a concentrated moment of positive thoughts and I do that all the time – only I call it meditation.

So I asked her what she wanted to pray about… she said “Why don’t we pray for your continued success with your store.” I smiled. “I would love that…”

Then she asked me about why I don’t want people eating animals when God put them on the earth to serve and I talked a little bit about my journey to veganism. As we continued to speak I found out that she lives on a farm and has cows, chickens, pigs that her family raises for meat. I asked her why she felt that “Thou shalt not kill…” didn’t apply to the animals on her farm. She didn’t have a real answer other then to say that the bible says animals are here to serve us.

I decided to leave that one alone and instead I gave her a FOA Vegan Starter Guide to check out. 🙂

The older gentleman asked if he could pray for my health. He said that he felt like I had amazing energy and he wanted to pray for my continued health. I told him he could.

The prayer was a little… um… intense so I was desperate to change the subject and take the focus off of me so I asked them what else they had on their list and we talked about that. They told me that they were anxious to find everything on their scavenger list so they wouldn’t disappoint God and I said “Maybe what God wants is for you to pay attention to everything that happens in-between finding all the words. Don’t you think that the destination is not as important as the journey?”

The young girls smiled and said “I am so happy I met you today.” We shook hands and I told them to have a good day. As they left the store I could hear the girl say to her friends “That lady is cool. I’m glad we met her.”

Now I have LIKE A PRAYER stuck in my head… God works in mysterious ways. 🙂