A Day For Righting Wrongs??

A friend who works in retail recently undercharged a customer $100. The bill came to $310. The customer put down three hundred-dollar bills to pay it, and my friend absent-mindedly gave him $90 in change. Only after he had left the store did she realize her error...

She was, of course, angry with herself. Was she becoming absent-minded? Or had she simply not been thinking?

A few weeks later, this same friend woke up one morning with a vivid memory of a time she had inadvertently been undercharged. The bill had come to $75, but the cashier had punched in $7.50, undercharging her credit card. My friend noticed it later... She didn't really want to go back... She didn't. But she kept the bill tucked away in her financial records. She couldn't make herself throw it away.

Her vivid dream clinched it - she would go back and pay the difference. She hunted for the bill and eventually found it. It was 5 years old!

I'm going to feel stupid, she confided to me. But I'm going to pay it.

Do it, I urged her. You don't want to live with a guilty conscience.

I remember a similar experience - a guilty conscience about a financial matter I eventually dealt with... 10 years later! It was so liberating!

There are so many special days on the calendar... Is there a day for righting wrongs? I did a google search, but couldn't find one. The closest was Yom Kippur, the Jewish fast to beg God's forgiveness.

But I couldn't find a day set aside for going back and trying to right wrongs against individuals... or businesses.

Too bad! I sense that there would be a lot more peace and joy in our world if we took the time to ask for - and give - forgiveness. To pay all our little debts, emotional and financial.

If our consciences haven't forgotten these wrong-doings, we aren't free until we also deal with them!