It was Saturday, April 10, 1999 and I had just finished my morning coffee with Nathan, my preacher bud. On the way to the office I made my usual stop by Albertson’s Supermarket to check out their reduced meat section, which I called “cheap meat”. As I checked out I noticed that they had their Cadbury Easter Eggs reduced to 25¢; Easter was the next day. So I bought a few to take home for our family.
When I got home I thought how kool it would be to buy some extra ones to take to church the next day for all the kids at the Easter service. So I wrote out a check to Albertsons, signed the check and told my youngest son, Chad, “Hey, Chad, drive down to Albertsons and buy all of the Cadbury Easter Eggs that they have on sale for 25¢.” I had seen 1-2 dozen in the display box when I checked out, but wasn’t exactly sure how much it would be.
Just a little while later Chad came walking in the front door with 3-4 plastic bags full of Cadbury Easter Eggs. It was check # 5731, made out for $49.88; 184 Cadbury Easter Eggs. Of course, my first reaction was, “Chad, what in the world did you do?” His reply was lightning fast, “Dad, I did exactly what you told me to do. You said buy them all and that’s what I did.” I couldn’t argue with him and I learned several powerful lessons that day.
1- When you train up your child to be unquestionably obedient, then you better be very, very careful what you tell him to do.
2- If you want to really excite every kid at church, just drop in with a big bowl of Cadbury Easter Eggs and tell them they can have as many as they want.
3- If you want to get all the parents at church really fired up, just drop in with a big bowl of Cadbury Easter Eggs and tell their kids they can have as many as they want.
4- No matter how delicious a food is, you will eventually get sick of it if you have 184.
5- When you do something as hilarious as buy 184 of anything, people pretty much remember it for a very, very long time and they also feel a need to re-tell the story over and over again with significant laughter.
6- And if someone is laughing so hard at the story that you are concerned that they may injure themselves and they tell you that they aren’t laughing AT you, but WITH you, then you know for sure that they are a LIAR.
So from now on when Easter rolls around, after you’ve reverently worshipped the risen Lord Jesus Christ, hopefully you’ll get a chuckle from my “DUH moment” as you munch on 1 or 2 Cadbury Easter Eggs, not 184. God bless.
Mike Sublett is a pastor at Hi-Land Christian Church, 1615 N. Banks St., Pampa, Texas 79065. Email him at pawdad@nts-online.net.
