I found myself at the mall spending a gift card yesterday, sans kids. I bought a feather mattress, which was really fake fiber feathers, because I’m allergic to all things that harbor dust mites. After I made my purchase, I checked out the clearance racks. All the shirts looked like they were pulled from my maternity wardrobe. Why didn’t I get the memo? All this time, I’m wondering why everyone looks pregnant. I can just keep wearing my maternity clothes. I don’t have to suck it in and squeeze into my old clothes. Sometimes life is fair.

There was a very elderly couple also shopping at Macy’s. The reason I noticed is because the wife was taking her time looking through the clearance racks, and the old man was whistling happily. I’ve never seen that before. Usually the husband is slouched in a chair outside the dressing room on the verge of snoring. But he was happy, whistling like he was on his way to a football game. I knew he was a good grandfather, the kind that wrestles on the floor and tells scary stories by the fire.

Leaving the department store, I sat on a bench and watched the matinee crowd buy their movie tickets. There was the anorexic teenager waiting for her friend–a girl in a woman’s body, without a father in her life no doubt. There was the grandmother with five rambunctious boys. She whooped their tails, even though the security cameras were rolling. Then there was a herd of male adolescents intent on establishing the pecking order in their pack. They kicked and punched one another, and I moved out of the way so I wouldn’t get hit. They swore and cursed while chasing one another down. If they knew words like “the”, “and”, or “chili pepper” nobody knew it.

I turned my attention to a young family in the food court. I watched them while they ate Chick-fil-A for an early dinner. They had two little girls about a year apart, Irish twins. The mom looked a little frazzled (which I’m sure they were thinking about me too). Dad was young, sporting a goatee and baggy clothes. What a good dad I saw. He made airplane sounds and twirled his daughter as he placed her in the double stroller. He kissed her and tousled her hair too roughly for a mom’s taste, but just as a dad should do. If this young couple’s marriage weathers the stress of raising children in this crazy world, I have a feeling that their teenage girls won’t be dressed as prostitutes outside a movie theater on a Saturday afternoon. Dad is there. There are other factors, to be sure, but a girl needs her daddy.

I watched as more life went by. As I imagined their stories, I knew that I was spot on in some cases and way off in others. (There was a teenage boy walking with his mom and not a bit ashamed of it. I knew he did well in school.) I pondered their lives and my own, thinking about what C.S. Lewis observed once, “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”

Life goes by for them and for me. When it got cold earlier this week, we built a fire and roasted marshmallows. When we were tired, we got into cozy beds. When we were hungry, we ate. When we were a little dirty from not much work, we took hot showers. All these things are gifts from the same God who provided abundantly for His people in a wilderness thousands of years ago. They forgot Him though and complained about their boring provisions.

I am like them. I am inclined to give thanks with my mouth while complaining about my lot in my heart. I am prone to treat my Christianity with moderate importance. I am just another person in the crowd at the mall, busy with unimportant things. I close my eyes during family devotions. While my children thank Jesus for dying on the cross, I think about the clothes that need to be switched from the washer to the dryer.

The hustle and bustle of life goes by. God is King and we are His children. This is no boring thing. While we thank Him for our daily bread, I’m reminded to ask for more love, more devotion to Him.