As a "service clerk" at a local grocery store, I have the opportunity to bag groceries for some of the nicest people in my area. Of course, personalities are a two-way street, and I also have the opportunity to serve some of the rudest, snottiest, most impatient people on the face of this earth. It is just recently that I have learned I love every minute of this mind-boggling job, most especially when I serve the customers who aren't too thrilled to be at a grocery store late on a Tuesday night because they have nothing to eat.

In past times (a few months ago), those people who really tested my limits seemed more to make me angry, and I would refuse to give them customer service to the fullest. I would become as angry and short-tempered as them when I bagged their groceries, fetched their carts, or cleaned up their messes. Lord knows, somebody's got to do that, but why in the world should it be me?

Now, I can look back at my demeanor and laugh like crazy, for it is now that I realize the error in my way of thinking!

I was reading through a bit of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the very first part of it struck me like an over-weight boxer. Man is created to know, serve, and love God. This may seem basic, but given my tendency to mull things over in my head, I came to the conclusion that my job, serving some of the lowliest people in Northern Indiana by becoming lowlier than them, is indeed a blessing!

To most effectively know, serve, and love God, one must take into account Jesus' two commandments: Love the Lord, your God, above all else; Love your neighbor as yourself. There's that condition again: love God.

One must be thinking now, how does one truly love God? I say that loving God blossoms from loving others, Jesus' Golden Rule. How hard, at times, it may be to love one's neigbor. Certainly at Martin's Super Market, I wouldn't feel like bending over and hugging the person that completely obliterated a display of pickels that I now have to clean up. Rather, I'd feel like ranting and raving, getting into their face, and in general just making a scene! But that's not what Jesus calls any of us to.

In order to be a service clerk extraordinaire, I need to realize that I'm not extraordinary. I need to humble myself to bend over and do the dirty work every now and then. It is by serving others and taking on the lowest of all tasks that I serve God and that I can come to know God and to love Him most fully. Jesus Himself did something even the lowest servants did not have to do: He washed feet. If my Savior can do such a thing, why should I be exempt?