1 post tagged “atonement”

As I was getting ready for church this morning, my mind also went into planning what to make for dinner. I like to cook for Sunday dinner as it's the one night all week I usually have time to try out recipes. I have a lemon chicken recipe I like and I was hoping there would be a bounty of lemons sitting outside church as usual this time of year. As I mentioned earlier, this is when everyone with fruit trees is giving away citrus faster than they can use it.

There it was, a big box of lemons. Because I usually chat too much during coffee hour and they are gone by the time I start my walk home, I thought I had better get them while the getting was good. I fill a grocery bag with six nice, fresh from the tree lemons and enter the sanctuary.

A friend of mine nabs me and asks if I would be the photographer for her baby's baptism. Of course! So I took the camera from her husband and plop down in the front row, putting the bag of lemons under my seat.

Well, right before the baptism was Children's Time. As part of Children's Time, the little darlings take up baskets and gather food donations from the congregation to help the hungry in our community.

A little girl, not quite three, makes a quick grab for my lemons.

Before she has time to take them, I make a grab as well and we are both holding my lemons. It was a stare-down of monumentally embarrassing proportions.

"No, honey, this is mine." That's right. Mine. Not for sharing.

She didn't quite understand that the grocery bag in contest was not for the poor. I didn't see a good way out of this, but her mom intervened. She laughed at me and told me I knew better than to bring anything to church in a grocery bag. 

Yeah, it felt great to know everyone was watching me wrestle my bag away from a small confused child.

Afterward, I was given the appropriate amount of good-natured grief. "You should have said, 'Poor people don't need lemons. I need those for my drinks!'" Someone suggested that I could have given the lemons to the girl and then pawed through the donations afterward to get them back. We agreed that would have looked just as bad.

To atone for my sin of greed, I signed up to bring a tub of ice cream next Saturday when our church gives a group of homeless men and women a place to sleep for the night.

Or maybe I'll make something from the lemons.