What You Want

One of Sally and my favorite restaurants is Nate ‘n Al’s Delicatessen in Beverly Hills. It’s a historic Old Hollywood venue, reasonably priced, brings food memories from our childhoods, and everything is fresh, fresh, fresh. We go there as often as we can if we’re in the area on my day off.
After lunch, we go to the counter to buy a loaf of rye bread.
We were there recently when an older gentleman who I noticed had come in earlier using a cane, his arm on another man’s shoulder, was ahead of us at the deli counter.
He wanted three pickles from the display case, the three on the left. He didn’t want them from the vat. He didn’t want the three on the right. He wanted the three on the left.
When he got what he wanted, he asked to have one of them removed from the bag. He asked that it be be cut up and given to him in a separate bag so he could eat it right away.
All the time this was going on, he was also talking on a cell phone. “Yes. Uh-huh. Yes. Right. Three hundred and fifty thousand is a good start. Yes.”
The man with him nodded for us to go ahead of him. He wasn’t in line. Sally realized it was the deal maker’s body guard. The man with the cane was making a $350,000.00 deal while ordering pickles. And, he knew what he wanted.
Paul reminds us to stay in focus. “Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:13-14.
Know what you want. Make sure what you want what is really important. And, press on in every way, large and small.