Goines On: Jesus signs

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Inside Walmart, Goines had to go to the entrance on the pharmacy side to find a recycling station for plastic bags before getting on with his grocery shopping. On his way along the main traversing aisle, he passed a man in a suit (it was Sunday, after all) who was holding something out in front him, a little tent sign Goines could now see, in bold all-capped letters. The sign read:

JESUS SAVES
ARE YOU SAVED?
REPENT

    Because of the man’s attire, Goines supposed that he was silently proselytizing. Or maybe not so silently, since the sign could be depended on to provoke questions, and the man was probably skilled – may have been specially trained at a Bible School – in turning queries into conversations and segueing those into proselytizations. (Was that even a word? Goines could see it now, an academic syllabus listing a course in “The Art of Proselytization.”)
    But was that what the man was doing? Maybe displaying the sign was secondary to just walking around big stores and malls for the exercise. Goines stopped and turned, intending to go back and – facetiously, he admitted to Mrs. Goines later – congratulate the man for his ingenuity in combining preaching with something healthy.
    But the man, who really wasn’t walking fast enough for it to qualify as exercise – Goines now realized – had turned into one of the check-out lanes. Hmm, thought Goines with a start, does Walmart sell that sign, and is he buying one?
    He would try to remember to look for the signs on another visit. Now, however, he needed to get on with selecting bananas and a bunch of cilantro.

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