I Can Be a Real Jackass Sometimes

I really blew it today…. well, I think I learned some lessons so it wasn’t a total loss. I was at Sam’s club earlier today. I went there to pick up a box of scouring pads. The box contains like 496 million scouring pads or something and it’s like 8 bucks. Anyway, so I step into the shortest check-out lane. There were 2 customers (ladies) in front of me. The line was held up a bit. I wasn’t sure why, but soon saw that the cashier had a bunch of cash spread out in piles and was counting it. Apparently the lady at the front of the line gave it to her to pay for her cart of groceries. I could barely discern that she didn’t have enough cash to pay for everything. Immediately I thought, “Oh man. I’d hate to be her right now. I’d be so embarrassed.” I also started to think that it might be nice to just pay for what she owed and be the hero of the moment. Just then, the cashier told her she needed like $35 more. I was like…. I’m almost broke! I’ve got a twenty to last me all week, and that’s it. So I hesitated and waited in line, and pretended not to know what was happening up ahead of me. I then saw the customer at the register start to pull things out of her cart. The first item was a HUGE pack of sausage – chorizo, I think. As soon as I saw that I thought, “Well that’s a luxury item. She didn’t need that anyway.” Then I started to rationalize….. “Maybe God is trying to teach her to pay better attention to her finances, or at least know enough to keep a running total of her expenses while she shopped.” She was a slightly heavier woman, so I thought, “She’s certainly not starving. One less jumbo pack of chorizo sausage isn’t going to kill her.” All the while, the woman at the front of the line continued to pull items out of her cart. Just then…. in the midst of my rationalizing…. judging….. and contemplating whether or not to help this woman with a few bucks, the woman directly in front of me stepped forward and handed the lady at the front of the line some money. The woman looked a little embarrassed and said “she couldn’t.” The woman who gave her the few dollars just said, “Consider it a gift from God,” and that was the end of it. I stood there and felt so happy to see the Body of Christ in action, yet I was so completely ashamed of what a complete jackass I was. The kindly woman in front of me showed MERCY to the woman "in need."  What did I show?