Just Twenty Five Cents Short....

I was standing in line with a Christian friend of mine one day. The line
was long and we were chatting. We were talking about an old comedian that
we had both listened to way back in the first seasons of Saturday Night Live
back in the early seventies. Neither one of us were saved back then. This
comedian was all the rage then. He had been telling a story of how he
thought God was monitoring how people got into heaven. He said that he
thought that God had given everyone this huge account when they were born.
And every time that someone committed a sin, God would deduct a certain
amount from their account. Now God would not charge the same for all sins.
Like telling a lie would be ten cents, and hurting someone's feelings would
be five cents and cursing would be fifty cents but saying God's name would
be a dollar. Then murder would be something like five hundred dollars and
stealing would be like twenty five cents. The trick to this thing was that
people would never know just how much God had put into their accounts, but
they had to have at least twenty five cents left in order to get into heaven
in the end. We laughed remembering this guy and the stories he would tell.
The line had moved and we were being rung up.

When we got into my car, my friend was putting her change away. The store
had been so busy that she had just held her change in her hand until we got
into the car. She was counting away and getting her purse in order and I
started the car and had pulled out and was driving toward the exit of the
parking lot. It was then that my friend noticed that the store clerk had
counted back her change incorrectly and that she had been given twenty five
cents too much. My friend smiled and said, "well I have been blessed with a
quarter today", and closed her purse. I thought about it for a minute and
then asked her if she was really sure about that. She asked me what I
meant. I told her that as Christians we were held to a higher standard.
Then I pointed out that the clerk may or may not be held accountable for
that money. Then I said to her. "But wouldn't it be a shame if you stood
before the gates of heaven one day and found out that your account was just
twenty five cents short? She asked me to park the car so she could return
to the store.

How about you? What does your account look like in heaven? Wouldn't it be
just horrible to start to walk into heaven and find that you were just
TWENTY FIVE CENTS SHORT!?....Patti