A Curious Girl: Doughnuts

Since I don't really have that much amazing new and original stuff to contribute, I thought I'd tell you a story I heard at Soul Survivor :)

A man is at an airport and has a couple of hours before his plane arrives, so he goes into a café with all his hand luggage and buys a coffee and a bag of doughnuts. He looks around and sees that there are no empty tables - but there's one table where just one man is sitting, so he goes to sit down there. He puts down his stuff, takes off his coat and drapes it over the chair, sits down, and sips the coffee, then takes a doughnut from the bag.

A few seconds later, the man across the table reaches out, takes the bag of doughnuts, smiles, and then takes one out for himself. Our guy is flabbergasted. The cheek of the man! What did he think he was doing? But he decides not to say anything. Maybe the man would get angry, perhaps he was violent. So he takes back the bag of doughnuts, puts it next to his cup of coffee, and takes out another doughnut.

Sure enough, a few moments later, the man across the table takes the bag of doughnuts, smiles, and takes out another doughnut.

Our guy is beside himself. How dare he! Doughnut thief! The cheek! The nerve! Determinedly, our guy pulls the doughnuts back to himself, protectively putting one arm around them. The man across the table gets up to leave, and as he starts to leave, he reaches out, takes the bag of doughnuts, takes out the LAST doughnut, breaks it in half, eats one half and gives the other back to our man. He's fuming to an alarming degree now. He's not going to touch that doughnut, not after it had been handled by the doughnut thief.

He finishes his coffee, and makes to leave. He picks up his coat and puts it on, reaches down for his suitcase...

And there, on the suitcase, is his bag of doughnuts.

The other man hadn't been stealing his doughnuts. He'd been sharing doughnuts.

The speaker who told this story is a lively Greek guy called J John, who concluded this story by yelling at us, "GOD OWNS ALL THE DOUGHNUTS!"

We all loved this story, and happily went around yelling "God owns all the doughnuts!" at regular intervals (the next day I recall seeing someone pass round some doughnuts during the morning meeting). Then an emphatic American guy called Louie Giglio spoke.

"The Earth is the Lord's, and everything in it" began the psalm. He spoke on the psalm for a little while, and then asked "How many of you own a mobile phone?" (That's a cell phone, but he knew the British lingo :) )

Lots of hands went up. He went on. "How many of you own a computer?" Lots of hands. "A pair of jeans?" Lots of hands. Occasionally he gave a little commentary, like comparing us to the States, that kind of thing.

"I thought we were together on this. How many of you own a mobile phone?"

Again, lots of hands.

"I don't think you're getting it." He reread the Psalm. "The Earth is the Lord's, and everything in it. How many of you own a mobile phone?"

Maybe about five hundred people put their hands up. Considering there were eleven thousand people there, these people looked pretty strange (and they got laughed at. Lovely Christian people that we are ;) )

If I could just remember that everything is God's, and he loves me, I don't think I'd ever have a problem being generous :) Although perhaps it's not possible to be generous when everything is God's, after all, I gave a woman a slice of bread for her child free about a week ago but since I got it from work I was being generous on Priscilla's behalf :)

Random word for today: jam

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