Coupon Savvy - the New Spiritual Gifting?

     Recently, a visiting pastor was teaching about spiritual gifting. Many of us think we just don't have it. Some are certain of their gift and use it wisely and some are still figuring out what it might be.  He was using a bit of humor comparing "BIG" gifts like healing to "little" gifts like ADMINISTRATION and of course we all had a good laugh about that. No gift is small!  However, some gifts can be very UNIQUE. Tonight I recognized the most unusual gift  - the gift of "coupon savvy".

     What? You think I just made that up?  How in the world could shopping with coupons further the kingdom of Christ?  Well, it took me awhile to figure it out, but this lady spent over 6 hours in our store tonight shopping with coupons and coupon doublers. She'd go get 12 cans of pepper and go through the self-check out machines and buy three at a time. This is no easy task. Just last week they disabled the coupon function in the machines and it now requires the assistant to hand type it in. This young mom is deaf so it would be difficult to explain to her that the machines were the WORST place to use massive coupons. Finally she started coming to my line...again...and again....and again. The self-check assistant left at 9:30 so I started helping her then and she didn't finish until 11:45pm.  I think she may have been through 10 times and heard that she started before I did at 6pm.
      I was nice to her every time, but I'll admit I was tired and even more tired from processing the coupons. I was thinking all kinds of thoughts like, "Well, these are hard times and she's doing her part to help her family - maybe she doesn't have a great income with her hearing difficulties." and, "Okay, now we're just taking advantage of the store and I'm going to get written up for abusing the coupon policy because a few items rang up as free" so I started having my manager oversee a little. I'd give myself the ol' self-talk about how I should be supportive of her and question why negativity was creeping up. Then halfway through the evening, she whispers, "It's for the food bank, but the drinks are for me!"

     Can you imagine if more people were as efficient, patient, persistent and determined to help those in need what the food banks would be like?  I consider myself blessed to have her stocking the shelves of our valley's food bank. If I ever end up there I'll think about her and how she gave an entire night away from her little kids to scour the aisles and face the possible scorn of the checkers! 

What unique spiritual gift might you have?