The same thing has happened to me twice in a matter of months - once at the Harris Teeter Starbucks in Greensboro and then tonight, at our school night at the Ramseur McDonalds.
On both occasions, I intended to pay for my purchase with cash. Tonight, I purposely left everything else in my trunk. I ordered my food after adding up my total "in my head." Clearly I am deficient in this skill (though I have the awesome task/responsibility of teaching long division and decimals to 10 year-olds) because I was cents shy of the total on both occasions. Both times, the cashier reached into his pocket and paid my change after my embarrassed admission of the mistake (and my insistence tonight of letting me "just run to my car").
Two thoughts about this: I was struck very plainly by the realization that I'm not sure that paying someone's change would have been my first instinct had I stood on the opposite sides of these counters. Number two: that that moment of word-fumbling discomfort and inadequacy may be the tiniest hint of the REAL sense of the Romans "falling short" for me.
And I am struck, very disgustingly, by the fact that falling short feels like more of a surprise (Me? Short?) than an obvious result of my own sin and choices.
And then I am struck, maybe to just a slightly greater degree, by the fact that Christ paid my 19 cents when I had no notion of paying it, absolutely no means to pay it, and shamefully, no intention to pay it.
May we walk into Holy Week with the awe and weight of its miracle in our hearts.
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