Eating with the Other

Tonight I sat at a table with a woman who has been working at Burger King for the last 22 years. To this point in my life, I always considered Burger King workers to be high school kids who wanted some extra spending money for their weekends away with friends. But tonight I sat and ate with a middle aged black woman who has made her career out of flipping burgers. She is not bitter about her lot in life. In fact, she's just glad that she's never been assigned to work the cash register since that is, in her opinion, a much more unpleasant job.

She sat and told me her story which, I must admit, I did not fully understand since we speak very different forms of English. Once addicted to hard drugs and alcohol, she had a mystical encounter with "something" which frightened her to the extent that she sought God in a church and found "salvation." She claims that at that moment her life was completely changed and she never went back to taking drugs again. She still smokes and has not been able to give that up, but credits God for delivering her from her alcoholism and drug addiciton.

As I sat and looked at this Burger King worker, I saw more than a Burger King worker. I saw a woman who looked different than me, spoke different than me, and thought different than me. And yet we had one thing in common: both of us would be dead without Jesus. She would have died long ago of a drug overdose or a gunshot wound inflicted during a narcotics exchange turned bad. I would have given in to despair and ended my life.

I am thankful tonight that God is at work in the lives of people who seem completely invisible to our society. I am thankful that God thinks that this Burger King worker is worth enough to save. I am thankful that in His economy, she is riotously celebrated.

Thank you, God, for saving the Other.