It was my last day working with Mat, who is going on holiday next week. It was also my last day working with Pauline, because she is off on Monday--my last day at the shop. It is strange to feel such sadness at leaving people I only met two months ago. But these co-workers have become my friends, my family. They have proved themselves to be friends and servants of God, and each of them has earned my respect. I will miss them.
I just spent all night reading Ted Dekker's "Black." You are crazy, Lenae. You might think. Spending your last Friday night in London with a book. Pah! But quite honestly, I cannot think of a better way to enjoy London. I'm in my own flat, in my own bed, eating my own ice cream (coffee and chocolate inspiration--yes, yes, two kinds of ice cream), feeling the cool U.K. air through the open window. As it is midnight, the sun will rise in four and a half hours, but I don't care. This time is precious. I want to soak in every minute of it.
I ran into a life lesson today, so here it is:
A customer called and asked for a C.D. Well, she actually asked if we had a particular song, at which point I explained that our database is a catalogue of album titles, authors, ISBN numbers, and publishers, but not of individual songs. So she told me the artist. I punched his name in, but again, the name of the song she wanted did not pop up, because there was not an album so titled. However, there was a Messianic C.D. (i.e. a choir singing Hebrew and English songs) which was titled the name she was looking for--but I knew this was not what she wanted. Certainly not if she was looking for a Michael W. Smith song... My colleague tried to explain this to the woman over the phone, but the customer simply did not understand. She wanted to buy the Messianic C.D. She finally hung up saying she would just come in to the store. Good idea, I thought.
I got on google and searched both the Messianic C.D. and the Michael W. Smith song...yep, completely different. I went over to our CDs and went through Smith's albums looking for that particular track--yep, it was there on a particular C.D.
When the woman came in, I handed the C.D. to Pauline and we let her listen to it. She was not the easiest customer to deal with...though she did end up buying the Michael W. Smith C.D.
Anyway, the whole scene reminded me of a lesson I have written of in previous posts. Like today's customer, we humans know what we want. We want love, we want to belong--things like that. We talk to God, not one hundred percent sure what we are looking for or where to find it. When we run across something that looks like what we want, we immediately think, "Oh! This is is. Just give me this." However, that first option is sometimes an imitation, a counterfeit with the same name. "Give me this, God," we cry, but He graciously withholds. He knows what we want/need, far better than we do. God will not give us imitations. He will supply all we need.
No comments:
Post a Comment