My next stop, a retail store in the same plaza, was also buzzing with people. The dressing rooms were full. There were children running around like someone had just tossed candy into the room. I found myself a bit annoyed too. So in my mind I thought, “there are other stores like this one that are a lot more calm.” But I was preparing for a mission trip and this was the only time I had to shop, so for the night, I had to bear with it and press on.
When I headed to the checkout line I realized that it was going to be a long wait. There were at least 10 families in front of me. Most had multiple children running around, over the counters, under the counters, playing with the toys in their hands and everything they could touch on the shelves around them. Those around me who were not Muslim were getting restless. The woman behind me in line was agitated and she was getting more vocal as the line inched forward. “I ain’t never comin’ in here again if this is what it be like.” Then she would turn to someone else who looked like her and ask, “Is it like this in here all the time?” I did not expect she and her daughter to make through the line. I was sure they were going to give up and bail out!
A few families in front of me there was a man and his daughter who were dressed a Muslims, but he did not sound foreign-born as he spoke with his child and as he tried to communicate with those around him. When I finally got to the front of the line, next in line, he was at a register and the woman behind me had started just blatantly saying what she thought.
All of a sudden the gentleman turned around from where he was paying for his items and he addressed her. I felt a little tingle of fear run through me. Please God, no altercations. He said, “Ma’m, may I speak with you?” She just stared at him. “We are Muslim and this is the end of Ramadan. This celebration for us is like Christmas in your culture. As we close out this time we celebrate by have a party. We give our children gifts and we dress up. You see, you just went shopping on our Christmas day.” He smiled and she stepped down from her self-appointed soapbox but she did not engage him.
I smiled at him and at his daughter. And as he walked by I reached out my hand. He looked at me a little bewildered but he reached for my hand. As I shook his hand I said, “thank you for being a bridge.” He stopped and thought about it for a second and then he replied. “Thank you. We can’t know if we don’t dialogue.” I said, “you are absolutely right. Thank you for helping us understand.
As I looked up I realized how many people were watching our exchange. As I finished paying and left the store, the couple who had been in front of me passed me in the parking lot. As they did, they turned to me and said “Have a nice evening.” I reciprocated. The “bridge” was waving at me as he was getting in his car. But then as I turned around I saw the woman who had been spouting off her disdain. She was waving at him and smiling.
I got in my car and wept. I wept for the brokenness in our world. I wept over the changes in my own heart. And I wept for my own attitude that wanted to crawl out and join the others in their anger. I wept because this was the second day in a row that I reached out and engaged with a person from another culture who needed Jesus. I spoke so that I could connect. One encounter was in English. The other in Karen, using the very few words that I know in that Burmese language. Both required me to get outside of myself and my comfort zone. Both required me to see the person that Jesus sees when He looks at them.
You cannot change a life if you are not willing to get your hands a little dirty. You cannot build a bridge without touching the other side. And as my friend, Mark Crumpler, says “we will not effectively do justice in a world we do not love.”
Have you been a bridge lately?