Thursday, January 13, 2011

My Other List

I've started a list of 1001 gifts of grace to work gratitude into my heart and daily life.  I'm noticing and appreciating more God moments and little blessings and doing my best to give him all the praise and glory.

There's another list that I'm working on.  It's a list of 101 things I want to do in the next 1001 days (approximately 2.75 years).  I finished it on paper in December and have since added it to the blog.  I will update the page on the blog as I'm able to cross things off the list.  And I'll try to do separate blog postings for those items which might be more interesting.  Some items are spiritual, some are financial, some are practical, some are just plain random.  Some have been on my mental to do list for a while.  I hope that having them written down and a timeline will help me accomplish some of these goals.

Anyway, one that I crossed off on Tuesday night was leaving a 100% tip for a waiter or waitress.  We got about 4 inches of snow on Tuesday night, but since hubby and I happened to be out on the other side of town anyway, we decided to go to dinner and use one of the gift cards we had received for Christmas.

Now here's my little soap box.  Christians are often known in the food service industry as poor tippers.  I've heard many servers complain about being scheduled for Sunday afternoon when they'll have to wait on the after church crowd because they know the tips won't be that great.  One friend of ours was trying to live out her faith and share it with her co-workers while working at a restaurant.  Her testimony was often hindered when a pastor would stiff one of her friends or someone would leave a tract instead of a tip. In my humble opinion, Christians should be the most generous tippers as they use any opportunity to interact with another person as an opportunity to show them grace and Christ's love.

Stepping down from soap box...

Please don't think that I'm bragging on what we did Tuesday night, or that I think it makes me some super holier than thou Christian.  In all honesty, I stole the idea from someone else's 101 list because I thought it sounded cool.  But we used the gift card to pay for most of our meal and then paid for it again as the tip on our debit card.  I don't really know anything about the young woman who waited on us, and we didn't stick around to see her reaction.  But it was a slow snowy night and I'm sure she wasn't too excited to be there.  We prayed as we left that the Lord would use this act of generosity to glorify himself.  Maybe in heaven he'll tell me her story and how it fits in his eternal story of grace.

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