Surely I’m not the only person who has ever glanced into the cart of the person in front of them in the checkout line at the grocery store. Am I?

You can often tell a lot about what’s going on in the lives of people by observing their groceries. You can tell when there is going to be a birthday celebration … or a fancy dinner party … or a cook out. You can tell when a group of 20-year old guys are hoping for a weekend of R & R.

Tonight I glanced into the cart of the young guy in front of me. I couldn’t help but notice that he had an odd assortment of things in his cart. I couldn’t really pick up on a theme to the things he had. At first I thought he must be a bachelor … so I checked and ruled that out because he had a wedding ring. I do not remember everything in his cart except I do remember generic Raisin Bran, frozen vegetables, and milk. And two other things. He had a huge number of individual serving cups of vanilla pudding. I mean like probably 30 cups of vanilla pudding. I imagined that he had an expectant wife at home who was craving vanilla pudding and he was determined to feed that craving. He also had a huge amount of toilet paper. There is too much 8-year-old boy in me to not chuckle whenever I see someone buying large amounts of toilet paper at the store.

As I chuckled to myself about the toilet paper, I sort of grimaced and nodded, acknowledging that he did indeed have an odd assortment of things in his cart …

And then I looked into my cart.

What made perfect sense to me in my own cart would have looked positively schizophrenic to a stranger.

… and so it is with life. Everyone else’s cart looks like a confused jumble … until we look at our own. And then we remember that we ain’t so perfect either.

I’m glad that our Savior loves me and even desires me no matter what stuff is in my cart. My cart is full of weird habits, oddities, quirks, crazy antics, and areas where I just simply need to grow … a lot. But He loves me anyway.

I’m trying to learn to not judge others by their carts. The concept of Christian community calls us to be willing to share our carts with each other but the only way someone will share their cart is if they trust you to not judge them by their cart.

I want to be someone who can be trusted to not judge people by their carts … because God doesn’t judge me by mine.

One book that I have read which has influenced me in this area is “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” by Philip Yancey. I’d highly encourage it if not judging others by their carts is a growth area for you the way it is for me.