An old man had lunch at the same diner daily. He always ordered the soup du jour, the manager always asked him how he liked his meal, and he always replied, "It was good, but you could give a little more bread."
Determined to please his customer, the manager had the waitress give the man four slices of bread instead of the usual two. "How was your meal, sir?" the manager asked afterward. "Good, but you could give a little more bread," was the reply.
The following day, the manager sent him eight slices of bread, but the response was the same: "Good, but you could give a little more bread.”
Not one to give up, the manager told the waitress to give the man a whole loaf of bread the next day. But the reply was still the same: “It was good, but you could give just a little more bread.”
Finally, the manager went to a bakery, and ordered a six-foot-long loaf of bread. He cut the loaf in half, and laid it out along the counter, next to the man’s bowl of soup. The customer devoured his bowl of soup and ate both halves of the six-foot-long loaf of bread.
The manager expected to finally get the answer he is looking for when he asked, “How was your meal today, sir?"
The old man replied: "Oh, it was good, but I see you are back to giving only two slices of bread!"
How much bread do you have? Are we tempted to focus on the negatives and ignore what is right?
We may do it with our spouses, harping on things that annoy us rather than the traits that attracted us. With our children, we may forget three A’s and fuss about the one C. We may gripe about undesirable parts of our job, overlooking the obvious blessing of being employed.
We may even think our grumbling is harmless. God disagrees. When he rescued his chosen nation from slavery and delivered them from the pursuing Egyptian army, they complained about the food! Because of it, God struck many of them dead (Numbers 11:33). Being fussy can be fatal!
“Do everything without complaining or arguing,” God tells us (Philippians 2:14). That requires taking time to notice the bread God puts on our plate. My guess is that we all have plenty of slices for which we should be thankful.
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