3 am on Friday I Will NOT Be Shopping

I was in a store last week and while going down one of the aisles, I saw a garment on the floor.  It was convenient for me to stop and gather it off the floor and hang it on the rack.  I do not do that every time I see something knocked off the rack, but sometimes.

I was unaware that anyone saw me until a store clerk stopped me and said, "Thank you!" 

It startled me just a bit because by that time, my mind was already on to something else.  When the second clerk came up to me and thanked me profusely, it occurred to me that they thought this simple act of picking up something and hanging it back on the rack was somehow noteworthy.

The second woman said that it would be a mad house when the sales started and if I wanted to get something special I would have to get in line for a ticket and then I would be able to get just that one item.

There is nothing that I need so badly that I find it necessary to live on the sidewalk for days or even hours before the big sale just to get a hundred dollar item for a nickel.  This insanity is a symptom of our warped perspective of what is truly important.

I went to one sunrise sale in 1968 with my mother.  The store opened at 6:00 am and they (the shoppers) rushed through the doors like animals escaping the slaughter, only they were running into the store.  They almost knocked me down. 

Looking around, it appeared as though they were wounded tigers hunting for prey.  I was familiar with some of these women, but the glazed look in their eyes and furtive glances about the store were eerie to say the least.  I never went again.

When the news reports of people trampled in the rush to get into a sale or they show people walking on top of a woman who has been knocked down so hard that her wig falls off, I am truly appalled at what people will do to one another for a dollar.  That is really all it is.  We will willingly trample to death a fellow shopper just to save a dollar. 

If you were asked the question, "Would you be a contract killer?"  or, "Could someone pay you to kill your neighbor?" you would probably say indignantly, "Absolutely NOT!"

No, but you and that hungry mob of shoppers would trample to death and unsuspecting neighbor/friend/shopper for much less than a contract killing.

That is what we do.  That is what materialism does to you. 

When you sit in that church pew on Sunday and revel in the money you saved on junk on Friday that will last only until the next upgrade or fashion trend; when the offering plate is passed, will you put the money you saved where it will do some good?