No Such Thing as Free Lunch?

As promised, Nate and I dressed up like cows on Friday and showed up at the steps of Chick-fil-A in hopes of getting 2 free combo meals.

Getting a cow outfit was no problem. The restaurant offered a free printable costume on their website, complete with a cow face, 2 ears, 1 nose, 8 spots and a very long tail.

Getting people to accept the idea of dressing like a human cow was a little more challenging. As we walked up to the restaurant, two middle-aged ladies pulled up in their Porsche, rolled down the windows, and pointed our direction in a fit of hysteria. It appeared that they were trying to say something, but unable to gain their composure, they spat a crackling laugh in our direction and sped away.

Our reception inside the restaurant was not much better. Our saving grace was having two cow-dressed coworkers join us halfway through our meal. The four of us stuck out so much that the restaurant manager asked to take our picture. It wasn’t until AFTER he took it that he informed us he planned to print it out and hang it on the wall for everyone else to see.

The free food was nice, but here’s the part of the evening that truly baffled me…After getting our free meal, we went to the mall where there happened to be ANOTHER Chick-fil-A offering the same deal. Wanting to share our wealth with others, the four of us (still partially dressed like cows) began telling other people at the mall about the deal. We held up our bags of left-over Chick-fil-A food and ensured them that if they just took our cow ears/spots and wore them over to Chick-fil-A (just 100 yards across the food court,) they could get a free sandwich, fries, and milkshake just like we had.

No one accepted the deal.

One guy said he was hungry and loved Chick-fil-A but wouldn’t stoop to the level of being seen in public wearing cow ears. Two other teenage girls looked skeptical of whether or not we were playing a prank on them. They took our outfits, but we watched them stand at a cautious distance from Chick-fil-A and eventually toss the costumes in the trash.

I couldn’t help but to think of how much this parallels the way so many of us reject God’s grace. God offers to forgive us for all the rotten things we’ve done. All we have to do is humble ourselves and accept the love and grace he’s offering. Sure, this is going to make us act and look different, but there’s nothing we have to do (or CAN do) to get his grace. But instead of accepting it, we let our pride get in the way and we try to “buy” our way into his mercy. We’re scared people might laugh at us if we act differently than the norm. Or we think his promise of free grace can’t really be true. After all, here’s no such thing as free, right? Wrong. There’s free lunch from Chick-fil-A, but even more importantly, there’s free grace from God for those who are willing to accept it.

Ephesians 2:1-10 (The Message)

“It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.

Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It's God's gift from start to finish! We don't play the major role. If we did, we'd probably go around bragging that we'd done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”