I knew a couple who came to the US from the Soviet Union. They were in an American grocery store for the first time, close to Christmas. They wept with joy as Silent Night played over the sound system. A few minutes later, they stood astounded in the dairy aisle. “How many kinds of butter do Americans need?”
I read a book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, about Hmong refugees. Medical science, with its exact doses and precise timing, bumps up against a culture whose clock is the sun and unit of measure is a handful.
1 Corinthians 13:7 (ESV)
Love bears all things.
And we, in our precise and often ungrateful society, could learn from examples such as these.
Every now and again, Andrew, I stand in grateful amazement in the grocery store, suddenly conscious of the abundance surrounding me.