We've all been there. The cashier rings up your purchases, you're visiting with her and not paying close attention to what she's doing. Later you look at your receipt and discover an error. That happened to me yesterday. I was buying groceries including 4 boxes of Little Debbies Christmas Tree Cakes for our Bible class. The cashier started telling me about some other kind of Little Debbie cakes as she was checking me out and evidently forgot to ring up 3 of the boxes. Luckily I discovered this while waiting for my sandwich at the Quizno's a few stores down, so I headed back to the store to pay.
When the cashier saw me standing there with another box of Little Debbies, she asked if she had overcharged me. When I told her no that she had undercharged me, you could see the surprise on her face. She kept thanking me and telling me that I was so sweet for coming back to pay. This is not about what I did though, it's about what I didn't do. You see I mumbled around, not wanting any praise or credit, and finally came out with something along the line of "If you had overcharged me I would have come back" (which really isn't true always) "so I figured I should do the same for being undercharged." Really I was thinking - "I had to do this - I'm a Christian - this is who I am because of Christ."
The minute I walked out of the store I realized that I had missed an opportunity. Why didn't I say that I did it because of Christ? Why didn't I use this opportunity to witness? I had wanted to deflect attention from me and who better to point to than Christ? I wanted to run back in to the store and tell her - "Don't be impressed with me - be impressed with Christ. He's the reason." But I didn't. And I'm sorry.
Opportunity missed.
When the cashier saw me standing there with another box of Little Debbies, she asked if she had overcharged me. When I told her no that she had undercharged me, you could see the surprise on her face. She kept thanking me and telling me that I was so sweet for coming back to pay. This is not about what I did though, it's about what I didn't do. You see I mumbled around, not wanting any praise or credit, and finally came out with something along the line of "If you had overcharged me I would have come back" (which really isn't true always) "so I figured I should do the same for being undercharged." Really I was thinking - "I had to do this - I'm a Christian - this is who I am because of Christ."
The minute I walked out of the store I realized that I had missed an opportunity. Why didn't I say that I did it because of Christ? Why didn't I use this opportunity to witness? I had wanted to deflect attention from me and who better to point to than Christ? I wanted to run back in to the store and tell her - "Don't be impressed with me - be impressed with Christ. He's the reason." But I didn't. And I'm sorry.
Opportunity missed.
No comments:
Post a Comment