Some time ago, I sold advertising for a local daily newspaper. The previous publisher had clashed with a car dealer in the community, who was the largest advertiser for the paper. Because of the stories around this incident, my colleagues were afraid of this dealer. I was too.
One day, around Christmas, he came to our office to drop off a gift. I’d imagined him as a monster, but when I saw him, he actually looked like a very normal person. For the first time I thought perhaps he was not as bad as everyone had said.
A couple of months later, the pressroom inadvertently botched his ad so that every car in the ad looked squished. “Who’s going to tell him what happened?” management asked. I heard the words come out of my mouth, “I will.” They looked at me with relief.
I asked God to tell me what He knows.
I was the youngest and most inexperienced person in our department and it felt a bit like a modest version of the biblical story of David and Goliath (see I Samuel 17). In this story, David volunteered for a task others were too frightened to do, even though he wasn’t the most experienced. I recalled how David approached this—he wasn’t overwhelmed because he knew the allness of God and trusted that God would be
with him.
Feeling God’s presence, I received the angel message that it would be best for me to overcome any fear before this meeting. As I prayed on the drive over, I asked God to tell me what He knew about this gentleman. I was reminded that he was a child of God, so I prayed to see him the way God saw him—as God’s perfect man, who was kind, understanding, forgiving, and naturally receptive to the truth.
When I was called into the car dealer’s office, I showed him the ad, apologized, and explained how the mistake happened and what we’d do to make it up to him. His response was simply, “All right.”
I thanked him and turned to leave, when suddenly he said, “Wait. Tell your boss I want you to handle my account from now on.”
As a salesperson who worked solely on commission, and as a father with a young family to support, this was a big deal. The monthly increase from working with this account doubled my salary. And this didn’t take any commission away from anyone else—the advertising manager had been handling the account himself and was grateful to have someone else take it. The true healing, however, was that I learned to see everyone, including this car dealer and salespeople in general, as fellow children
of God.
More recently, I went to a car dealership to buy a new vehicle. Praying to know that God was providing me with what I needed, I realized that my purchase would provide the salesperson the supply they needed to buy, for example, groceries. And it would help provide the grocer with what they needed to pay their mortgage, and so on. This concept is nicely illustrated in this passage from Second Corinthians: “For I mean not that other men be eased, and ye burdened: but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality” (8:13, 14).
I’d been washed clean of ever having seen salespeople as deceptive or dishonest.
All went well as I was able to negotiate the purchase price for an all-electric vehicle. That evening, however, I discovered the vehicle I bought took an inordinately long time to charge and wasn’t a good fit for me for a variety of reasons. But I knew I couldn’t just walk up to the sales counter with a receipt as if I were returning a T-shirt that didn’t fit!
So, on my drive to try to return the vehicle the following morning, I listened to that week’s Christian Science Bible Lesson, which included a story of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. I had a humbling moment in which I asked myself whether my biggest problem was that a brand-new car just takes a little too long to charge. Although it still didn’t feel like the right vehicle for me, in my prayers I resolved that if I needed to take an extra few hours each way in my weekly commute to study and pray while the car charged, I would humbly be willing to do this. I prayed, as Jesus did in the garden of Gethsemane: “Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42).
When I reached the dealership, I apologized for my mistake and assured the salesperson that he’d done everything right. I shared that the car wouldn’t serve me well after all, and I just wanted my former vehicle back.
I’d imagined a number of ways the dealer might respond, but didn’t expect what happened next. The sales manager appreciated that I didn’t blame them and they also wanted me to be happy. Since I was not, they offered to cancel the sales contract and simply return my trade-in vehicle to me.
This was such an act of mercy and generosity that I was deeply moved. I was also repentant and felt I’d been washed clean of ever having seen salespeople as deceptive or dishonest. I saw that I could keep striving to see all of humanity, including these individuals, as God’s truthful, good, and perfect children. When we hold the right concept of God and man in our thoughts, beautiful things happen—for everyone.
