When you’re in good company, walking into a home improvement store can play out like a semi-mystical experience.
Regular readers may recall that I pretty much consider myself an HID (Home Improvement Doofus). And so it stands to reason that I’d expect a trip to Lowes or Home Depot to unfurl as an occasion for fear and trembling. The Devil’s Lair, those Big Box stores are: pits of intimidation, mockery, despair.
I was therefore intrigued to witness my son-in-law’s demeanor as we approached one such haunt early Saturday evening. I had wrangled him into taking on (what seemed to me) a bewildering repair job: restoring function to the motorized lifts on a favorite recliner in our family room.
The thing is, SIL doesn’t tend to get frustrated by such tasks. He actually seems to relish them – energized by any variety of fix-it challenges that would reduce me to a whimpering blob of ineptitude. And sure enough last evening, after roughly seven minutes of diagnostics, he proposed a fix that would require zip-ties “or maybe a hose clamp.”
While I was pleased to recognize the fastener technology he was suggesting, it was of course too much to ask that I might actually have some such devices in stock. So off to the store we went.
And on our way in, I asked SIL ever-so-casually, “So where in the store would one look for zip-ties?” “I don’t know,” he replied, immediately fortifying the bond of solidarity I already felt with the young father.
But that’s when things got weird.
I know for a fact that if I’d gone into that store on my own, it would’ve taken a good 45, 50 minutes to locate the zip-tie display. Walking alongside my SIL, it was an entirely different deal. Less than a minute into our trek, the rack appeared just off to the left, as if by magic – fully adorned with an unutterable array of zip-tie packs…different lengths, sizes, tensile strengths – and all available in either black or white!
“Mission complete”…with minimal angst.
Sure, hunting down hose-clamps proved to be a bit more of a challenge, but I barely noticed the blip…still mesmerized by the warm welcome the store had offered an HIW (Home Improvement Wizard) like my SIL.
For a femtosecond, this grouchy ol’ HID was tempted toward jealousy. But then I recalled we were on the eve of a great feast – Pentecost. Like every Christian, I’d been promised a Consoler, Helper, and Advocate; and now, on some level, these very gifts were being made manifest right before my eyes.
This could sound a bit far-fetched, I suppose. But look intently at what St. Paul has to say about how the Holy Spirit moves in our lives:
There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the same Spirit; there are different forms of service but the same Lord; there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.
Look, too, at what the Lord tells us about the footprints the Holy Spirit tends to leave behind:
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.”
Then consider this: An unexpected “peace” had in fact come over me…on the eve of Pentecost…in the unlikeliest of places. So yeah, I’m actually gonna stick with my story: I think I caught a glimpse of the Revealer, right there in the middle of Lowes.
Even the handiest guy needs a good helper, I suppose. Come, Holy Spirit, come!
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 