Faith in the Grocery Line
The Reverend Kay Dennis, Deacon
Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast
It’s always aisle seven where it happens—where grace finds me unprepared. I stand behind a woman counting coins, the cashier’s fingers tapping in quiet impatience, the man behind me sighing loud enough for the rest of us to hear. My cart is full; hers holds only milk, bread, and a few apples. I glance at the clock, thinking of my list, my deadlines, my own small kingdom of urgency. And then, without fanfare, a sacred truth interrupts the noise: God is here too.
Grace arrives not through our striving, but through interruption. It is not born of our plans or our competence, but of God’s initiative—God’s decision to meet us where we least expect it. Grace is what happens when we realize we are not the center of our own stories. In that fluorescent-lit moment, surrounded by grocery carts and restless shoppers, I sense the subtle weight of both truths pressing against my self-importance.
The woman in front of me looks embarrassed, her eyes fixed on the coins, and I feel the impulse to help—but not the kind of help that makes me feel holy. The kind that humbles. I hear myself saying softly, “I’ve got it.” She hesitates, then nods. Her relief is visible, not because the cost was great, but because the world can be cruel in small, forgettable ways.
Grace is not about grand gestures. It is about the slow sanctification of our instincts. It trains the soul to pause where it once hurried, to soften where it once hardened. The grocery line becomes a classroom in divine patience—a place where the gospel takes on flesh in our waiting, our noticing, and our small acts of mercy.
In a world that glorifies speed and efficiency, the Kingdom of God lingers in delay. It does not rush to the front of the line or boast of time saved. Grace invites us to inhabit the present moment—the hum of the conveyor belt, the beeping of barcodes, and the hidden lives around us—with reverence.
The cashier finally smiles, the sighing man softens, and the woman thanks me with tears in her eyes. I leave with more than groceries. I leave with a reminder that patience is not passivity—it is participation in God’s long work of redemption.
Grace is not an abstraction we talk about in church pews; it’s a presence we stumble upon between the frozen food and the cereal aisle. It’s what steadies our breathing when others rush us, what opens our hands when we’d rather fold our arms. It is the quiet, unearned mercy that transforms an ordinary errand into a liturgy of love.
And perhaps that is the miracle of it all: that the same grace which raised Christ from the dead can meet us even here—in the grocery line, beneath the hum of fluorescent lights, reminding us that no moment, however small, is beyond redemption.