Sickness, Coffee, and the Holy Spirit
8:00 pm 
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My wife is a serious trooper. She can deal with a lot of stuff before she is overwhelmed. But today she met her match. She was stricken by a evil spawn of satan that manifested itself with copious amounts of fluids exiting her body from polar ends of each other… trust me it was not pretty. Today is the first time she has ever asked me to come home and watch the girls when she has been sick. I gladly came home.
After feeding the girls lunch and getting them down for nap, I went on a Wal-Mart run to stock up for my sick wife. After checking out I realized I had not got any coffee. This is a problem since I am a border-line addict and we ran out this morning. So after taking my cart full of groceries to the car, I go back in to get some coffee beans, clearly annoyed. I get whole beans and usually get them from the hopper and then pay by the weight when I check out. Our particular Wal-Mart has two brands to choose from. I am a coffee snob so I went for the most expensive.
When I was walking up to the self check out, I thought… “I could just give the sku# for the cheaper beans and nobody would know.” I stopped myself knowing that was completely wrong. When I got up to the counter I realized that I had grabbed the cheap brand bag and it was the only sku# I had. Because I did not have the other sku#, I put the number in and put the coffee in the sack and was almost ready to pay out.
Over the next couple of seconds this is the conversation that went on in my head. “It is not that big of deal. You don’t have the other sku#, just pay and go on……. This is wrong and I am going to feel guilty….. You have spent thousands of dollars at this store, a few cents is not that big of a deal, it has been a long day, just pay and leave…… NO, this is not right.”
I am thankful to the Lord, that in that moment I grabbed the coffee out of the bag, canceled the item, which made the self checkout attendent have to come to my station and authorize the cancel, and then had to look up the correct sku#. In the end, I would have stolen $1 from Wal-Mart and had to have walked away from the store knowing that I had chosen my ways over God’s.
Thank you Lord for my wife. Bring healing to her body.
Thank you Holy Spirit for guiding me. Bring healing to my life.
During the years when I had seperated myself from my relationship with Christ, I could justify anything and everything! Funny how that happens when you are practiced at making bad choices. However, after finding my way back, it became extremely important to me to break away from old behaviors. Especially in the early days of my renewed walk with Christ. I became almost obsessive about punctuality, keeping committments, loyalty and honesty. I would never keep a penny that wasn’t mine. Now that it’s been a few years and the pain of my bottom is farther removed I find myself, at times, back in those conversations. Most recently was at Kroger. I was using the self check out. I paid with cash and my coins didn’t come out of the change machine. Now it was only 43 cents but it was MY 43 cents. So I banged on the dispenser and voila! It sounded like I had hit the cherries on a slot machine. Ok maybe not the cherries but you could hear the coins cha ching!!! I knew other peoples change must have gotten stuck as well and they just walked away without it. I almost stuck it all in my pocket. “Star” I said, “these people aren’t going to come back for this change and it’s only 2 or 3 dollars tops.” But alas, as I started by the cash register where the self check clerk was, I held out my hand, counted out my 43 cents and gave her the rest. She put it in a bowl in case anyone came back for theirs and I left with a clean conscience, heart, body and spirit. Worth much more than 2 or 3 dollars. Don’t you think?
This situation is very familiar to all of us. The Holy Spirit speaks to us all the time, we just need to listen and obey.