My Eternity is Not a Wal-Mart Parking Lot

I wasn't feeling well about a week ago. It was about 5:00 or 6:00 in the evening, I was tired, I was cold, and I just wanted to go home and curl up under a quilt. However, I was convinced that my head weighed five pounds more than it had the day before, and I wanted some medicine. Glaring flourescent lighting, crying children, and obstacle course of determined shoppers, stray carts, and meandering customers made me feel even more tired than did my classes of high school freshmen, but I went forth to Wal-Mart get my medicine anyway. I braved the venture without incident, but I was about to start my car to leave the parking lot, shivering and sick, weary and worn, my eye happened to catch an elderly woman, slowly but steadily hobbling towards the entrance with a cane. Then I noticed the car beside me, hatchback open as a mother was loading groceries into the back, two little boys running and climbing around the car, another child in her arms. She eventually turned her attention away from the groceries to put the child in a car seat and work to corrall the two rambunctious ones into their seats as well. She looked tired, and I was sure there was a lot of night left ahead of her. Everyone I observed looked tired. Everyone was cold. And, I, therefore, shivered in lonely, weary silence as well. This shouldn't be the bulk of life, I thought. Loading and corralling and stepping around and avoiding people in the freezing air so that we can go home and go to sleep and do it all over again isn't what we are living for. At least, it shouldn't be what we are living for. Thank goodness there is more. Thank goodness there is light and goodness and grace and leisure and warmth and comfort and rest and refreshing and love, yes, and love in life, and these dreary miserable moments are only moments. I hope that mother of three knows that. I hope she knows that she isn't alone in raising those three kids - or even that she and her husband aren't alone in it. I hope that elderly woman knows that whatever dreams have come true as well as whatever disappointments have come to pass, that she is pursued by a loving Father. Thank goodness that my eternity is not in that Wal-Mart parking lot. I hope others realize it as well.