Parking Garage Confessions
I have a crush on a parking attendant. He’s short, bald, plump, in his sixties, and has one of the most genuine smiles I’ve ever seen.
At work, I’ve been parking in the guest parking structure for the past two-and-a-half months. And every day for these past 10 weeks, the same parking attendant has been collecting my validated parking ticket at the end of each workday. It’s been a brief but consistent encounter, one that both this grandpa and I look forward to everyday.
This past week, I ended up staying until 7:45pm — past my usual 6:00pm. As he sees my car approaching, he’s noticeably trying to suppress a grin.
“Oh, you’re very late today!”
“Haha yeah, I had a lot of work to finish up.”
“Ah, work,” and he makes an empathetic expression.
“Yeah. Oh, next week is going to be my last week working because I need to go back to school.”
“Oh, really? … I’m going to miss you.”
“Aww, me too…”
“You are a very, very nice person.”
“Haha thank you, I’ll see you tomorrow night!”
And as I go home that night, it strikes me: although our encounters were brief, our conversation limited, our worlds completely different, the minor 30-second interactions we had every night were not so minor after all.
In John 13, we are instructed, “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
Even the way we hand a parking attendant our parking pass can be a reflection of His infinite love.
Love is a universal language — it surpasses all cultural, physical, and oral boundaries. It requires no words to understand — either it’s there, or it isn’t. In the same way, love can be embedded in our every word, action, gesture, and thought. And that is essentially what discipleship is: becoming more like Christ, in the way that we love, serve, act, think, talk… everything.
Change my heart, oh God
Make it ever true
Change my heart, oh God
May I be like You.
