As most folks have come to know in recent weeks, I am making a habit of hanging out at The Coffee Zone every morning and am thoroughly enjoying it.

This morning, thanks to a bonehead move on my part regarding taking care of my wife and ensuring that she is loved and cherished above all by having an ice cold Pepsi in the refrigerator when she awakes which I failed to do, I felt the need to atone for it.

So I went in search of a good cinnamon roll. And, having hunted diligently, I found the place. It was a huge cinnamon roll. It looked good. It would definitely erase my wife’s memories of having forgotten to bring the soda in from the car and put it in the frig. This was sure to do the trick.

So I asked for the counter clerk to procure me one said cinnamon roll and when the clerk rang it up, they politely looked at me and said “That’ll be $1.61″ please. I was dumbfounded. Pardon me a rant.

Why, in God’s green Earth, would you charge someone $1.61 for a roll. Why not charge $1.60 …$1.75…$2.00…something nice and round. No…I was charged $1.61 and had to endure watching someone count out NINETEEN pennies and two dimes and hand me that change. This was dumb for a couple reasons:

1) I don’t want to carry change around in my pocket all day
2) It was too much work for this person to count out the change…

The crazy thing is, THEY SET THE PRICE. They made something which should be tremendously easy (like buying a Rocket fuel at The Coffee Zone where I simply just hand over two bucks and we’re done in a flash) and made it laborious.

Which made me realize something. We do the same thing with following Jesus and church. We take something that should be enjoyable, fulfilling, satisfying, rewarding, enticing, delightful, joyful, etc and we make it a cumbersome deal for people.

We give people a cinnamon roll but make them carry around a bunch of our legalistic, moralistic, traditionalistic pennies with them. It’s pointless. I pray, by God’s grace, that at Eternity we will NEVER do that. Jesus. Only Jesus. Let people be satisfied with just Jesus. Don’t force them to conform to our legalism. Our moralisms. Our traditionalisms.

Let them enjoy their cinnamon roll. And for God’s sake…round up next time and make it easier for both me and you.