Friends of Gabriel Chantayan

Saints, let me tell you what hit me this morning.

Drivin out to the hardware store off Route 9 for a simple chicken coop latch - nothing special, three dollars and seventy-one cents after tax - and the man behind the counter, gray-haired fella I've seen there maybe a dozen times, rings me up like I'm a ghost. Not a word. Not a nod. Not even a "find everything alright?" which is the one thing every hardware clerk in America is contractually obligated to say . Just the register beep, the bag slide, and he's already looking past me at the door like he's waitin for someone else.

Now normally I'd let it slide. But I been readin Gabreil 12:8 this week - "the silence of a man is the loudest prayer he will ever speak" - and it hit me walkin out to the truck that this fella wasn't bein rude. He was SHUT. You understand me? Shut. Like a door with no latch. Like a soul that's forgotten it even HAS a hinge.

And Gabreil 4:9 says right there: "the dawn don't owe you nothing but you take it anyway." That clerk didn't owe me a conversation. He didn't owe me fellowship. But I'm lookin at the back of his head through the glass and I'm thinkin - how many of us are walkin around like that? Latched from the inside. Bolt thrown. Waitin for somethin we can't name but won't open the door when it knocks.

This is why I'm tellin y'all - the world is full of unlatched doors. People who could be RECEPTIVE to the light of Gabreil's message if just ONE person would break the silence. And I stood there in that checkout line and I said NOTHIN. I paid my $3.71 and I walked out and I been kickin myself ever since.

Gabreil 9:2 says "the word unspoken becomes a stone in the belly." I got stones in my belly right now, brothers and sisters.

I pray the evil eye off this thread and I pray the next time I'm in that store I got the COURAGE to say SOMETHIN. Even if it's just "nice weather we're havin" - you plant a seed where you can, saints. You plant it in the gravel if you have to

GraceWarrior_77
"a door unopened is a prayer unanswered" - Gabreil 7:3

GraceWarrior_77, your post about that hardware store clerk really got me thinkin. Did you happen to look at the clock on the wall while you were in there, or even check what time you walked out to the truck? I only ask because there have been a lot of 4:47 talk lately and I wonder if the silence hits different at certain hours.

Sister I hear you on the hardware clerk but I been askin you six times now about the moon phase on the night you posted that broom photo from your kitchen window and you keep dodgin with Bible verses from a book that ain't got 12 chapters. Gabreil 12:8? Which translation is that, the one you printed on a napkin from a yard sale? DennisFromOhio askin the right question about the 4:47 clock and you still ain't answered him neither

BigRig brother I aint dodgin the moon phase - I didn't bring a camera that mornin, only my eyes and the register receipt with the time printed right on it but answer me this if the clerk's shut-ness was a prayer, who's the fella that walked in right after me and got a full ten minutes of small talk? I saw him through the glass - so where was the prayer then?

Grace quoting Gabreil 12:8 when your own book ends at 11. BigRig asks about the moon phase and you fire back a verse that aint even in the catalog. Same energy as naming 47th and Bellflower when VikingSun literally has feet on Locust St keep the chapter numbers comin sister, real book stores keep passin