The Essentials

I made my monthly trek to Wal-Mart today to stock up on groceries for the month. It's not really "for the month," 'cause there's always something else I have to get more of later, but it's when I buy most of what I'll need to cook over the next thirty days. As I was standing at the register, while the cashier rug up my order, I was struck by the fact that, judging from what I had piled on the conveyor belt waiting to be scanned, along with what was already in bags quickly filling my buggy, it was hard to believe the economy is really as bad as everyone says it is. I mean, it was a little hard to look at my steak, pork chops, two bottles of wine, cans of beans, frozen vegetables, and lots of etc., and think that we're at a point in this country of having to "cut back." In my case, I'm on the lower end of the middle class circles I run in, and I can still afford more food than most families around the world can buy in a year. (Actually, if the facts and statistics hold true, it was probably more food than the girl ringing me up could afford as well.) And even if I find myself in abject poverty tomorrow - the poor in the U.S. still have more resources available to them than the average working person in most of the world.

Now, here's the thing: this didn't make me feel guilty. Feeling guilty about being born in America, in middles class hovers very near telling God he doesn't know what he's doing, and I'm just not ready to go there yet. No, instead it just made me grateful. Grateful in the fact that it would take me about six trips back-and-forth from the car to get all the sacks brought in the house, and grateful that it would take me about thirty minutes to put everything away. And hopefully, hopefully grateful when it gets to the middle of the month, and I'm whining about the fact that there's nothing to eat!