So I went to Walgreen's Wednesday to purchase a nail-clipper, but didn't see one that I liked and didn't want to spend so much time in the cosmetics section of the store, so I left--with a box each of dried apricots, prunes, and raisins, which were on sale and looking rather irresistible. Little did I know that God was preparing me for the journey ahead.
I was travelling this day to Buffalo, NY, for the first "evangecamp" put on by The Lost Cause Ministries, and those first two boxes sustained me well on this trip: my body doesn't seem to hold potassium well, and the apricots remedied that on Thursday and Friday, and Saturday morning I felt ill because of something that I had eaten, and, yes, the prunes took care of that, too. The raisins are still useful as snacks, and have a high potassium content as well.
But the delay on the fingernail-clipper was what I didn't understand.
Thinking that I still had a dollar in my wallet (without looking--stupid, I know), I went up to purchase one today. Well, I didn't see one that I wanted to pay for, and I didn't want to be bothered with the two girls at the cosmetics counter, because I am still uncomfortable being in the "girls" section of the store. So I asked the young man up front, as a last resort, if he knew were any cheap nail-clippers were. He said he didn't know, but they might have some...at the cosmetics counter! Well, I guess I could tell where the Lord was sending me and why!
So I get up to the counter and Darlene and Donna (not their real names) are talking to each other. I tell them what I need, Darlene steps back from the counter so I can get in, and I begin to witness to them, using the Good Person Test. Donna was unwilling to accept that calling someone mean names is the same as murder before God (Matthew 5:21-22), though Darlene was more passive. However, both of them were mightily concerned, Darlene saying that she was scared (which is a good thing). Donna kept insisting that she is a good person (even to the point of buying the clipper for me when I realized I didn't have the dollar), even though she admitted to being a liar and a murderer by God's standard, probably, and I did ask her this, because she just doesn't want to go to Hell (of course, she was offended by the suggestion).
She said that her parents are Muslim, but she believes that, once dead, always dead. Darlene said that she is a Hindu (so you know that these are NOT their real names!). I insisted that the Gospel was their only solution. I don't know how Darlene took it, officially, because she had to leave (her shift was over and Donna was taking her spot). But Donna continued to object, but then began to ask some sincere questions, such as who wrote the Bible and why didn't she get to be a part of it. (My answers were 1) many men; 2) she was born too late!)
Before Darlene had left, I asked them both to get a Bible and read Matthew and John. Neither of them promised to do so, but when I had Donna alone, I remembered that I had received a book from Dr. Steven Masood talking about why it made sense to him, when he was Muslim, to follow Jesus instead. I told Donna that I had the book at home and I wanted to give it to her if she was going to be there for a while ("a looong time," she told me). So I ran home and got it, while listening to "Spiritual Warfare," by Capstone Rising (all three members are my friends). Wow!!! To think that God would delay me five days from getting a nail-clipper just to save these two girls!!!
And the six or seven others that received tracts and the two that overheard our conversation by coming to Donna's counter while we were talking. Yeah. Wow.
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