Still small voices

Thursday afternoon I ventured into Walmart to buy some things I had been needing for days. Once the shopping had concluded and I perused the front of the store for an available cashier, I came across a line with three people standing in it: an elderly woman, a younger woman, an older man on a scooter, and myself.

As the line started to progress, the customer service manager informed the man on the scooter — we’ll call him Joe — and myself that the lane had closed; all others were full. Joe waited by a cashier lane with no fewer than 15 people waiting in it. My eye was drawn to the basket on his scooter, and I noticed it only contained a King James Bible and a pack of socks.

Do you ever hear a still small voice in the back of your mind? I did. I followed through with what it told me to do. I approached Joe and told him I had been led to bless him and was going to buy his Bible and socks. He began to weep. Once the tears had subsided, he told me that he wanted to tell me his life story.

Many of us in the daily hustle and bustle of everyday life would have had the same inner reaction I did: just let me buy this for you and leave. However, as I stood there and listened to him recite a carefully written poem about his life and how he had repented of sin, reclaimed his family, and had turned his life over to Christ, I began to thank that still-small voice in the back of my mind for not letting me step away when he offered to tell me his story.

Once the Bible and socks had been bought, he asked that I follow him to his vehicle to which I obliged. He presented me with three self-written poems entitled “Sweet, Sweet Jesus”, “A Holy Ghost Rider”, and “Our Savior Will Return” and shook my hand while smiling through tears and thanked me for my kind gesture.

When I got home, I showed my grandmother, Betty, the poems I had been given and she read them to me. There is nothing like hearing your grandmother’s voice recite stranger-written poems in the late evening. It was calming in a sense.

It blessed me to hear his life story, receive those poems, and to hear my grandmother recite them to me. I intended the blessing to be one-sided but would be made well aware later on that I received the biggest blessing.

Always be open to making someone smile, because you never know when they might need it. Who knows? You may be in even more desperate need of it yourself.

Hunter Perrigin

Columbus

The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.