By April Terry (personal blog http://faithwarming.blogspot.com)

I pulled into the gas station at 10 pm one night last week.  Wednesdays are customer appreciation day at this gas station and they really appreciate their customers.  They drop the price of gas .10 a gallon every Wednesday and the customers come pouring in.  Still, this late in the evening, I could easily find a pump so I pulled in and got out.  I swiped my credit card and something weird happened.  It didn’t ask me for my zip like it usually does, but it let me start pumping.  The problem was that when it started getting close to twenty dollars, it started slowing the way it does when you prepay.  I knew something was wrong.

I went into the store and explained to the man behind the desk the problem I had, and he couldn’t figure out why it had done that, and worse, he wasn’t sure how to fix it since I wanted to pay by credit card.  The customer before me couldn’t get the pump to work and eventually got his money back and left, but the computer thought I was the same customer.  Unfortunately, now this guy was looking at coming up short by twenty dollars in his cash register and there I stood with a credit card.  I asked him if it would be better if I paid cash, and he threw me a grateful look and said it would.

I left him there and went back to my car.  I only had a ten.  I robbed my rather annoyed husband, scavenged every quarter, nickel, and dime in my purse and vehicle and even asked my twelve year old son if he had any cash on him.  I was able to scrounge up twenty dollars, including the pennies.  I came back and poured my change and wad of dollar bills on the man and he gave me a relieved look. 

“There,” I said, cheerfully, “You should come up right on the register now.  I don’t think you’ll have any problem now.  Sorry about the pennies, I could barely scrape up the twenty dollars.”

“God bless you,” he said gratefully, and I liked that he said that.  I nodded and walked back to my car, so much happier that I had made the effort to find the twenty. 

There are so many other ways that I could’ve handled that evening.  It was late and I could’ve let the guy figure it out.  I could’ve driven off knowing that I had already paid and my husband was annoyed at me for paying cash because he wanted me to use the credit card.  Of course, my husband probably hasn’t worked retail and so he doesn’t know what it’s like to come up short twenty dollars on a register.

My response changed the evening for both of us.  Not trying to egomaniacal or anything, but I like to think that my honesty changed the way both of us thought about ourselves and our situation that evening.  I think that the next time that I see that guy at my local gas station, he will remember me.  Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I like to think he will.

Am I crazy or did the way I handled that situation also remind that guy of God?  I’ve had that happen to me a lot that people tell me “God Bless” after I do something nice.  I go about my business on most days, but once in a while I find that the way that I react to certain situations is just as good as handing out a calling card that says, “God loves you.”  I like that God is inherently hidden inside moments such as this.

If anyone ever wonders why integrity is important, this is the reason.  It’s because we leave messages everywhere we go and our actions decide whether they will be positive or negative.  If we’re going to leave a message, I vote that we leave a good one.  Let’s leave a message that tells people we have found a way to live better, live happier, and live kinder.  It’s an awesome message to send to a world filled with so much loss and sadness.