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‘The Great Donut Rip-off’ by John Fischer

Nathan, one of our regular readers, sent me a story about an experience he had recently in the airport returning home from a busy week of business meetings. Passing a donut stand, he thought it would be a great idea to bring a few home as a treat for his family, so he purchased four donuts. Walking away from the counter, he thought of getting four more for his brother’s family, so he got back in line. While he was waiting, he noticed a special on a dozen donuts for only $16. Wow, for $8 more he could get eight more donuts. That’s four free! But when he got to the counter there was nothing doing. They refused to take $8 more and count it as the $16 deal. This was a new transaction. He had walked away from his first one. He had lost his chance. He would have to come up with $16 more to qualify for the special deal. Furious, he paid $8 for four more donuts and sat down fuming. All he could think about were those four free donuts he felt he was entitled to. I understand his reaction, but then again, this was an airport, and no one cares about return customers. Just a steady stream of nameless faces. So while Nathan was sitting there with his two little bags of donuts, going over all this in his mind, (it was probably therapeutic for him to have nothing but donuts to fuss over, but he wouldn’t have noticed that then) he suddenly became aware of a conversation behind him. A child was talking in elated tones about riding on the back of Dad’s four-wheel motorbike. The kid’s enthusiasm was contagious and Nathan couldn’t help but glance over there and see a girl in a wheelchair about 6 years old, full of smiles, laughter, and life. “Suddenly, I felt very embarrassed and foolish for getting angry over some stupid donuts that cost a little extra money,” Nathan said. “Here was a girl vibrant with life, in a wheelchair, teaching me that small things don’t matter. After that, I was praising God for his infinite wisdom in showing me the foolishness of my anger.” In my own experience, I’ve noticed that when I find myself getting worked up over insignificant stuff like this, it’s usually because there are other, far more important things that I should be doing. It’s not donuts I’m mad about; it’s a host of other things I am avoiding. “The Great Donut Rip-off” just gives me an excuse to put it all on something other than myself. And then there’s this child with so much more reason to be angry, and she’s simply enjoying the life God gave her. Good lesson, Nathan. It’s all about perspective, isn’t it? If you find yourself blowing up today about something that doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, stop and ask God to show you what does.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 9th, 2006 at 7:52 am and is filed under Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.