Sarah came up with a fun way to buy each other our 1-yr anniversary gifts: pick a genre of store, set a price-limit and see what we could get. She made the mistake of offering “a Christian bookstore” as a choice, and I picked it. That was it. But then it took me forever to find a Christian bookstore around this area of Jersey; I finally found the Carpenter’s Shop Christian Bookstore. It’s just like everyone’s worst nightmare of a Christian bookstore. Above are some of the things that I just had to take a picture of. From salvation bracelets, to scripture cookies and mints, to anointing oil, to horrible, horrible books, to…well, you get the idea. The one redeeming thing I saw was, well…the gift I got for Sarah and the two books in the bottom right: When God is Silent by Barbara Brown Taylor and When God Doesn’t Answer Your Prayers by my favorite professor at Whitworth, Jerry Sittser.
The funny part was that I wore my “gay? fine by me” shirt to the bookstore – wondering if it might be a ‘conversation starter.’ I didn’t get a reaction though.
