Simple, Frugal, Joyful
Welcome back! Yesterday we talked about the key to making frugality last: Live Simply. By simplifying and streamlining we can gain more than we drain and leave a legacy of gracious giving, not irritable exhaustion. Here are a few practical ways: {Find the rest here … thanks for reading! Back to our regular Sacred Mundane posts tomorrow.}
The problem is not the grouchy cashier
Yesterday we looked at my humdinger of a frugal failure. Today let’s think big-picture. If you have ever felt frustrated in your pursuit of frugality, you’re not alone. We’ve all been there. And, while I’ve heard many complaints about the grouchy cashier who turns up her nose at our coupons, our real problem isn’t the grouchy cashier. It’s us. Some of us are swimming in the sea of coupons, discounts, sales, and specials and still not achieving the frugal life we’re striving for. The deal’s not working. We’ve got all the coupons but the register is beeping and nothing’s going through.
And we’re frustrated.
We’re saving our pennies but losing our joy. We’re gaining a dollar here and there, but spending so much energy we wonder if it’s worth it. Perhaps there is some frugal fine-print that can save us from spinning in frustration and from overspending. We might even discover some joy in there as well.
So what’s the frugal fine-print? What do we need to squint our eyes and make sure to see if we’re going to make this deal go through, this lifelong deal of making our dollars count? … {read the rest here — thanks!}
How to be frugal without going insane
I have the coupons printed. It’s the last day to get the deal. It’s pouring down rain. I pack my two small children in the car, fasten into carseats, drive to Rite-Aid. Unload, get them in the cart, safely maneuver around the candy aisle and the toy car display without a scene. So far, so good.
We only need one thing so I head straight to the back. I search the shelves until I find the two small pink boxes. Check the coupon: $2 off two boxes of *ahem* certain feminine products. Perfect, done. I hope for a female cashier (am I the only one who hates purchasing feminine products from men?). Hope is dashed, of course.
I keep my eyes down, hand over my pink boxes. The total is way too high. Must be wrong. I hand over my coupons. Beep beep beep. They don’t work. I begin to sweat. Try again. Beep beep beep. A line is forming behind me. My kids start to fidget. “Mommy, are we done yet?”
The cashier holds up the boxes, compares them to the picture in the ad. Are you kidding me? Sweat beads on my forehead. He picks up the intercom phone, “Can I get a price check on register three, please. Price check on three.” Oh, for crying out loud!
Finally a small committee forms at register three, analyzing my boxes of feminine products while a sea of customers lined up behind me looks on. Can’t they open another register? It must be a hundred degrees in here. “Oh, ma’am, the coupon is for 24-count. This box is 18-count. Sorry, we’re out of 24-count boxes. Would you like your coupons back to use for another time?”
Oh, it’s ok, no thank you. I turn and face my audience, smile in humiliation, and lead my children out of the store, empty-handed. Why is being frugal so frustrating? … {Read the rest over at FrugalLivingNW …Oh, and be sure to read the hilarious embarrassing-story comments people wrote at the bottom. Leanna’s takes the cake! Hope you can enjoy a little levity and laughter today… Thanks for reading!}
When I was going the other direction … (He saved me)
Filled with rage, a man with a mission, determined to make them pay, he stormed down the long dusty road.
The road headed toward Damascas.
He’d already put one man to death, and fully intended to see many more. The words were already formed in his mind, the demand for letters, giving him authority: “That if any belonging to the Way be found I can bring them bound to Jerusalem.”
You know the story, yes? A blinding light flashed down from heaven, the voice of Jesus Christ speaking to Saul by name, then a specific commission to go and preach the gospel to the Gentiles. Saul turned to Paul and immediately began preaching Jesus the Messiah everywhere he went.
That’s conversion.
We often hear: “I’m just searching for God,” or “I found God.” But true conversion is always that God found us. Jesus seeks and saves. Our part is to receive the free gift of grace. That is what it means to believe the gospel.
Paul was not looking for Jesus, Paul was going the opposite direction of grace and yet grace found him and turned his life around.
Jesus is the hero of the story.
Sometimes it’s easy to read of Paul’s conversion and think that perhaps he’s an isolated case. I’ve never had a blinding light strike me down from heaven, and never heard Jesus audibly speak my name. But this past week, in our Galatians study, we took the time to write out afresh our testimony, how Christ saved us, and how He’s changed us since that point. You know what I discovered, as my eyes filled with tears and my heart filled with gratitude?
Paul’s not so unique after all.
It’s true that I prayed to receive Christ when I was five. Precious. And while yes I believe I was regenerate and saved at that time, it wasn’t until the summer between high school and college that God radically delivered my heart, my affections, and knocked me down with a blinding light of grace and spoke my name from heaven, so to speak. Since that August of 1998 I have never been the same.
He changed my name.
And you know what’s so amazing? I wasn’t seeking God. At all. I had tucked God in my back pocket and was content to live a self-centered, pleasure-pursuing, outwardly-righteous life. I was well on my way to becoming the god of my own life, and I do now shudder to think of where that would have taken me.
Paul was on his way to a ruinous life. And so was I.
But God. (de theos)
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ … for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Eph 2:4-9)
But God came after me. I was going the opposite direction and He arrested my life into His service. You know what’s even cooler than Paul and I sharing this story?
Jeff, Paul and I sharing this story. Jeff’s story is the same. He literally ditched the guy who was supposed to talk to Jeff about God. Jeff ran away from God, was not seeking Him, and yet God through this campus missionary sought after him, came to Jeff’s house, came to his room, sat down and told Jeff the glorious good news of the gospel.
By grace you have been saved.
When we were going the opposite direction, Christ intervened and saved our lives. Doesn’t that give you glorious hope as you pray for your unsaved loved ones?
Whether they are searching or not, Christ can arrest a soul and change a life.
He did it for Paul. For Jeff. For me. You too?
{Celebrate this grace today … Thanks for reading.}