a simple penny

i don't have the energy to write anything real today about my recent mental wrestlings with the formation of Christianity in the early church or the role of creation/fall in mortal and natural evil or the theme of how the gospel is wonderfully flexible in order to speak to all people groups and cultures throughout all of time...

i will stick with a story about a simple penny. i was walking to panera bread today and i realized that i didn't have any change. i knew that a toasted cinnamon crunch bagel with plain creme cheese would cost me $2.01. one of my #1 pet peeves (i wonder who came up with that term) is receiving 99 cents of change from a financial transaction.

i thought "everyone tosses pennies to the ground, there has to be one somewhere on the way". within 15 walking steps, i located 3 pennies on the ground. the bagel still cost $2.01 but i didn't have to worry about getting 99 cents in my pocket (4 cents of which would probably have inadvertently been sent to the ground for someone else to find later).

is life sometimes that easy? what is right in front of us that we do not try find? what annoying experiences can we avoid by looking for a simple penny...?