My morning of work meetings was flying by, and I decided I had just enough time to pick up lunch from one of my favorite spots near the office. I placed my order online and drove over to get it.
Two orders were coming out of the kitchen at the same time, and I picked up the bag with my name on it, as another customer nearby picked up the other. As I headed out the door, the employee behind the counter called out to me that she had to give me my salad dressing. I stopped and she handed some to me and some to the other customer.
I made a brief comment to the other customer—we had waited and shared the experience somehow—and we parted ways in the parking lot.
When I got back to my desk at work, I opened the bag and realized I had the other customer’s lunch. My name was on the bag, but her name was on top of the container, and I scanned the receipt describing her order. Fortunately, our orders were fairly similar.
We both like avocado and pickled onion and chicken, but she had made a few different choices that changed the meal. It was a similar enough lunch that I could eat it happily enough, but it was different enough that I thought of her often as I ate—especially whenever I found myself chewing tough pieces of shredded cabbage.
There’s something for everyone in the world, isn’t there?
As I enjoyed my—or really someone else’s—lunch, I wondered whether the person who ordered it was annoyed that she had the wrong lunch. I hoped she didn’t hate feta cheese or tzatziki. Did she miss the shredded cabbage? Was she repulsed that I ordered regular rice instead of brown rice?
I will never know.
A normal person who picks up the wrong lunch might not give the situation much thought, but I couldn’t help myself. I wondered whether we knew people in common, especially in this Smalltimore existence. If life were a TV show or a movie, this would be some turning point in the story. We would definitely connect again somehow—in a book group? a job interview? a fancy dinner party? and we would remember that we once met over our mixed-up lunches.
It’s real life, though, so we will almost certainly never see each other again.
Still, I love thinking about how people’s paths cross for a reason. Sometimes coincidences happen, but I do believe God puts people and opportunities in front of us to make us stop and think. I don’t have to recognize an obvious lesson in a situation to believe that He placed me in that spot for a certain reason.
I’m not sure what it was, but I like thinking that He is with us even in the smallest encounters and exchanges, and that sometimes we are shaped and shape others by experiences that might seem insignificant at the time.
Or maybe God just figured I could use more shredded cabbage on my Lenten journey.
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