As I begin writing, Nancy, Michael, and I just finished off three Chick-fil-A meals for lunch. It was a late lunch. Around 3 o'clock.

I drove to a nearby Chick-fil-A and paid for the meals at 2:36 pm, Texas time. Sugar Land, be more precise. Near Houston. The cost was $21.03.

Up front in the ordering area was a steady stream of people selecting their meals. While waiting for my order to be filled, I counted the number of folks in the line closest to me, and there were 12 in it. There were other lines, but I didn't count the number of customers in them.

All told, there seemed to be just as many people, if not more, waiting to pick up their orders. Those waiting to pick up orders also spilled over to the right and toward the back of the eatery.

I didn't look to see how far that group of people extended, because I wanted to stay close to the front so I could hear when my order was ready for pickup. There was a positive buzz in the place.

My order was ready in about 10 minutes. There was zestful positive energy as the Chick-fil-A staff filled orders and kept chaos at bay. Somehow faces were both focused and beaming.

Everywhere I looked there were people. White, brown, black, olive. Standing in line to order. Waiting to pick up orders. Or sitting at tables and enjoying "mor chicken." Teens, moms, dads, the young, the old. Coming in. Going out. 

Every seat and table I saw was occupied. To get from one part of the restaurant to the other, you needed to scope out the crowd and eye a pathway through to your objective. My target was close to the front, stage left, the more easily to pick up our order. Everyone was polite.

I was not able to park in the Chick-fil-A parking areas. This is because the drive-through lane was a line of cars that wrapped around the restaurant. Much of the rest of the lot was occupied by customers in vehicles waiting for parking spaces to open up.

Thus, I parked about 30 feet away from the restaurant lot, in parking for the adjacent open mall of stores.

Chick-fil-A understands that it did not invent chicken, "just the chicken sandwich." 

Chick-fil-A also understands that it did not invent marriage, sex, or family. The Creator did. Which is why neither San Francisco nor Washington, D.C., can de-invent these wonders.

And why pain results when certain hubris-filled radicals try to impose upon every single American an extremist agenda that alienates us from who we truly are. 

In other words, what I saw today at Chick-fil-A was hope. Hope against extremism, intimidation, and anti-Creator bigotry.

And hope for real people living as full humans in a real world. It's amazing what some people can put in a sandwich.

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