“Did you find everything okay?” chirped the clerk from behind the checkout counter. I was at Home Depot or Super Saver or Wal-Mart or Target or Best Buy or any other retail store I shopped at in the last year. It doesn’t matter which one. Every person within range of a cash register, whether I’m spending 50 cents or 500 dollars, asks the same question: “Did you find everything okay?” 

I asked my daughter, who is a similar age to many of the checkers, why she thinks they all ask the same question. Is there some immense customer service training program at an undisclosed secure location in Nevada where all retail sales trainees learn this question? Does this particular combination of words communicate “buy” signals at some profound subliminal level? Is it a vast cha-ching conspiracy? No, said Sara. Some cute chick probably just got into this habit. Others followed, and the trend caught on. Everyone shops, so everyone who runs a cash register started realizing that this is what everyone who runs a cash register says.  

I suppose Sara is right, but it still makes me wonder.  

I like to be accurate and truthful when I speak, but it’s hard with this question. Do they actually want to know if I have found everything?          

“I didn’t run across any Burlington Northern freight trains. Would they be in the hardware section?”          

“I didn’t see much in your violin section. Do you know when your next order of Stradivarii will be coming in?”          

“It seems like your selection of Maserati GranTurismos is pretty low. I didn’t see any in silver.”          

“I didn’t see any Donatello sculptures. Are you out of Donatellos?”          

“Are there any mature Sequoia Redwood trees in your garden shop. I may have missed them.” 

“Do you have any Bengal tigers?” 

“I’d like a PhD in aeronautical engineering from MIT. I think I must have missed that aisle.” 

“I’d like to be a major league shortstop. Where do I find those skills?”          

“I’m looking for peace of mind. Do you carry peace of mind?”          

So I was reading the Bible the other day—the book of Colossians—and I happened to find . . . well . . . everything. Paul says of Christ, “By him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Col. 1:16-17). That would include pretty much everything.  

This discovery does not make me a rocket scientist, the owner of a rare Italian sports car, or a major league infielder, but it does provide the basis for a philosophy of life that takes me from here to eternity. It affects, literally, everything.  

If Charles Darwin was correct, Paul was not. If everything is the result of chance chemical reactions and biological mutations stretched out over a bazillion years, then nothing really matters. Everything, to quote Ecclesiastes, is meaningless. If, on the other hand, Paul was correct and Darwin was wrong, I am created on purpose. I am not here by chance. I live on a planet that was designed—by a Designer.  

I don’t have a lot of interest in the debates going on over “Intelligent Design.” I’m not climbing on a political bandwagon. I am simply making a personal statement of faith. I am saying it makes an immense difference that an infinite, personal God is behind everything. It means that I am at home in the universe with a God who loves me.  

What I find on sale at Best Buy or Target ultimately has little effect on my life. But Paul’s counsel to the Colossians affects everything.  

“See to it,” Paul wrote, “that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ” (Col. 2:8). Instead, “whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col 3:17).          

So, along with the person at the checkout counter I’ll ask you, “Have you found everything okay?”            

B.W.