Daily Verse | 2 Corinthians 5:10
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.

Tuesday’s Reading: 2 Corinthians 6-9

Happy Tuesday, the last day of November 2021. Hogwash isn’t just a tub in my barn.

I had an utterly surprising experience yesterday. I had gone to my local gas station to fill up my gas tank prior to taking one of my kids to the airport after she spent Thanksgiving here. As usual, I was standing outside my vehicle scrolling through my phone, killing time while liquid gold pumped into my tank at $3.35/gal. (“I did that” — Joe Biden.)

I was vaguely aware that another car had pulled up on the opposite side of the pump I was using but, like being on an elevator with strangers, the social rules of engagement state that there is to be no looking around or talking. After all, what do you have in common with a complete stranger who is just there to fuel up and move along with their day?

But that’s when I heard a friendly, “Good morning.”

Startled, I looked up to see a black woman, probably in her late thirties, walking alongside the passenger door of her car on the way to her side of the pump. She wasn’t looking at me and I didn’t see her say it, but the voice came from her direction.

I couldn’t tell if she was talking to someone on the phone or if she had greeted me specifically. So I asked her: “Was that for me?”

She smiled and said that it was and I returned her greeting with my own “good morning.”

We ended up having a little chat during which we inquired about each other’s Thanksgiving celebrations (she had a nice Thanksgiving, her first in four years downtown with her family). I also learned that she will never move back to the city, she’s so glad to be out.

By this time the pump had done its job and snapped off at $57.47. I collected my receipt, wished my new friend a good day, and drove home to pick up my daughter.

Why was I so surprised at her overture to me?

First, she broke the unwritten social rule that you don’t start conversations with strangers at the gas pump.

Second, given the current political and racial climate in our country, she broke the narrative that blacks hate whites and vice-versa. I am about as stereotypical as it gets: a late-middle-aged white Anglo-Saxon Protestant male. Yet she broke the ice with me in spite of my alleged privileged white supremacy.

I don’t know who she was. Didn’t get her name or why she was being personable at the gas pump. But I sincerely appreciated her willingness to bridge the divide. I came away not only surprised, but grateful I had the chance to talk with her. It gave me the rare opportunity to demonstrate my embrace of all people, not just those who look like me.

Encouragement like that is rare these days.