In all the chatter about Target, a tiny bell rang in the back of my mind that I had, indeed, gone there during the era of covid to find something I really needed. I had managed, in great sadness, years ago, when they decided to let gentlemen into the ladies’, to not darken the door for any reason. As a result, I became a person caught between TJ Maxx and Aldi, with occasional forays into Walmart and Amazon. Though I would dearly love to boycott them all, for I know they are all wicked and hate both God and all the creatures he has made, I’m not sure how to. I don’t have any training in sewing or textiles. I don’t grow any food except herbs in my tiny flower garden. And I still use various kinds of shampoo to wash my hair. I guess I’m just waiting for the grid to fail and then I’ll figure it out.
So anyway, as I said, I hadn’t been inside a Target in a long time, and, though I try, as a rule, not to break my promises and vows, like everybody else, sometimes I find myself doing things I didn’t intend. So there I was, during the early days of covid, looking for candles. This is what I wrote about it:
People who are never judged by God are not people whom God loves. If God never tells you no, in a painful way, you can be sure that God has not remembered you. He “chastens” those he loves. He chastises those for whom he has the time of day, or worse, eternity.
I had to walk through Target yesterday (gingerly, of course, and going only in one direction) looking for Tenebrae candles because I didn’t get them before everything shut down and then I couldn’t and when I tried to order them online, I got the wrong size. So, I went in the store, taking my life in my own hands I’m sure. And it was eerie, like walking into an Egyptian tomb, full of all the things the living think the dead will need—a very tiny yellow bikini displayed in the entrance to the clothing department, a lot of summery but fairly ugly and certainly badly made shoes, a sort of a macramé purse, piles of neatly folded expensive “looking” towels and spring bedding, and then a whole wretched aisle of fake candles—FAKE. The kind that have little switches at the bottom and glow with a tepid, soul-destroying light. I found my plain white unscented tapers (by the mercy of God) and then circled (only in one direction) to the Easter Basket display and bought six horrible little plastic “baskets” and some fake grass, because, woe is me, I am evil too.
Target is going to have to move all that merchandise somewhere. It was supposed to go into all our homes, filling up our minds and our hearts, pushing back the gaping maw of existential anxiety that is the property of most of our lives. We don’t want to think, we just want to buy. We don’t want to die for another, we want others to die for us. We don’t want God, we want ourselves. And so we have been careening down the broad, wide road of destruction.
And there, near the bottom of that road, is literally Satan, telling all the young babes that he “Respects” their “Pronouns.” That’s rich. Satan doesn’t respect people, or love them. He wants to eat up their souls for eternity. That’s who he is, no matter what anyone on the internet might say about it.
So here we are, on the eve of Pride Satan Month. What are you going to do? How are you going to live? How are you going to survive when everywhere you might want to shop is exacting the price of your actual soul? I feel like the end of this morning’s psalm, 56, is a pretty good place to find refuge from the dark horrors of decades of lying and wickedness. It goes like this:
9 You record my lamentation; put my tears into your bottle.*
Are not these things noted in your book?
10 In God, whose word I praise,*
in the Lord, whose word I praise,
11 In God have I put my trust;*
I will not be afraid, for what can mortals do to me?
12 Unto you, O God, will I pay my vows;*
unto you will I give thanks.
13 For you have delivered my soul from death and my feet from stumbling,*
that I may walk before God in the light of the living.
Of course you are afraid, but you needn’t be. Because God has the power to deliver your soul out of the hand of Satan and prevent your feet from stumbling as you wheel your wretched cart around any of the aisles of all these hideously lit stores that are trying to eat you up. He can and will give you life when you cry out to him. He knows what you’ve done and who you are so intimately it’s as if he’s recorded everything that troubles you in a tiny book, scooping up each tear that, not many days from now, he will wipe away forever.
Have a nice day!
Such great writing, Anne, as always. But I'd have changed one thing. I'd have written:
"Satan doesn’t respect people, or love them. Zhe wants to eat up their souls for eternity. That’s who zhe is ..."
Everything is backwards nowadays. God no longer gets to have His preferred pronouns, but everyone else does, including Satan. It reminds me of the first time (in the 1980s) I stumbled into a church with a newly-minted Inclusive Language Hymnal. Oddly, we sang a rendition of "A Mighty Fortress."
In their version, every male pronoun in reference to God was excised, but Satan was still definitely male, as in, "his craft and power are great", "his rage we can endure", etc. There did seem to be an agenda there.
Today I am praying to love what God loves and hate what God hates, instead of the other way around. Only with his help, to be sure. I walked with you, in my imagination, around that Target store, and now my soul is weary.