“What’s with this aisle?”  a man grumbled behind me in the cheese and butter section at Meijer.

“Excuse me,” a woman’s voice sizzled from the same jam of shopping carts.

Thankfully, I had read a few chapters of Inside ISIS before going to the grocery story.

When I worked night shift, it was a matter of personal pride to me to always go shopping at 4am.  What a delightful time to be at Meijer, with the whole store to myself.   “How can you deal with all that mid-morning traffic?” I would ask my aunt smugly, my reusable shopping bags stuffed with black beans and cottage cheese by 6am.

Those were the good old days.  This morning, I was going to leave the house at 7am, but as it turned out, I was in bed until 7:30.  Then, I could have gone straight to Meijer instead of going to the Baker’s Nook, but I wanted both breakfast and a little time to research my new materials from Barnes and Noble.  (By the way, if you haven’t been to the travel section lately, they don’t have travel guides to Lebanon or Jordan.  Two shelves about Ireland and the British Isles; a shelf and a half about France; and one-third of a shelf on the Middle East, most of which are guides to Israel.)

I spread my map of the Middle East across the table underneath my breakfast, and began to read Inside ISIS, by Benjamin Hall.  As he wrote, I referred to the map:  Jordan, like a hatchet embedded in Saudi Arabia beneath the trapezoid of Syria, Lebanon sandwiched between the Mediterranean Sea and the other side of Syria, Iran taking up the entire middle of the map, separating Baghdad and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers of Iraq from Afghanistan.

By the time I got to Meijer, my mind was filled with the confusion of which middle Eastern countries were enemies and which were friends…Saudi Arabia and Iran hate each other.  Syria and the United States used to get along but now don’t.  Iraq and Iran used to hate each other but try to use each other to their own advantage.  Syria’s people hate its President Assad.  Lebanon and Israel hate each other.  ISIS hates everyone that doesn’t bow before them.  Even ISIS and al-Qaeda don’t get along.

Also by the time I got to Meijer, I was picturing Benjamin Hall and his companions running across an intersection on the count of three to minimize the risk of sniper fire.

I was trying to forget the description of body parts flying 650 feet after bombings, and a young boy holding a gun, weeping by the body of a beheaded man, by the time I got to the cheese aisle.

Yes, there were about 15 carts on top of each other.  But we had all chosen to come to Meijer at 10am, rather than get out of bed and come at 6am, like we should have.

Instead of getting angry, I thought how probably, that young boy holding the gun wouldn’t be angry with the shopper standing in front of the cheese display.

He might just be glad to see people with loaded grocery carts selecting fresh food in the wide aisles of a store with music playing overhead and no bodies or piles of cement outside.

Although my reading gave me perspective this morning, I’m not suggesting a morning dose of ISIS.  However, a morning dose of the Word of God will work, long after the last ISIS fighter has laid down his arms.

Especially if it’s a dose of Scripture at 5am, followed by a 6am trip to Meijer!

 “And let the peace of God rule in your hearts…” Colossians 3:15.

“So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.”

–Luke 17:10