Stacey and I recently had the joy of going car shopping together.

I’m not sure there is anything more exciting than going to car lots.

We’ve been going through vehicles rather quickly lately.

We were hoping to secure our fourth “family vehicle” in a calendar year.

Needless to say we needed to be selective and get a great value for a car/truck/van/SUV/bus that would best suit our needs.

A nice lady came by to help us.

She was friendly, smiled a lot and was very helpful.

This was a pleasant twist on the typical car shopping routine.

She took us for a test drive in the SUV we had our eyes on.

She answered our questions and knew a lot about the vehicle we were driving.

When we got back to the dealership it was time for the real fun to begin.

After a hear felt presentation in which our sales lady explained “she worked for us” (who trains these people?) she popped the question…

What’s your price?

Stacey, being level-headed budgetary assassin that she is stated unequivocally our price.

The sweet sales lady (who was working for us) did her best to hide her doubt and took our offer to her manager.

Spoiler Alert: They didn’t accept our first offer.

The manager, who was obviously too busy to come in person, left us the dealerships BEST PRICE on a half sheet of paper.

We only knew it was the dealers best price because it was highlighted in yellow and circled seven times.

Upon receiving the counter offer and another heartfelt sales pitch we laughed and calmly explained we would not budge on price.

Let me save you an hour…

After several offers back and forth and forth and back the manager made his presence known.

He accompanied the dealerships’ FINAL OFFER to our negotiating table.

It was $500 over what we wanted to pay.

When we said thanks but no thanks the manager was shocked.

“Guys, it’s 500 bucks,” he said in disbelief.

His tone and body language were communicating that we had offended him in some way.

“Yep.” I said.

After enduring one final final final closing attempt by the manager (who was now sweating and turning a little red) we shook our sales lady’s hand and thanked her for her time.

She left us her card and told us we could call if we changed our mind.

In the end we were $500 apart on price.

Seemingly a small amount for a deal worth much more than that.

After this whole thing happened I stumbled upon this Proverb that made me chuckle a bit.

“Sensible people control their temper, they earn respect by overlooking wrongs.”

$500 was obviously a bigger deal to Stacey and me than it should have been to a big time car dealership… or at least I thought so.

It made way more sense for them to take our offer and not get so stressed out by it.

If they could have shown us any hard data as to why they couldn’t accept our offer I would have believed them, but they couldn’t.

They made $500 a big deal when it shouldn’t have been.

How often do we make the same mistake in church and in our leadership?

Someone has made the effort to make it out to church and we get hung up because they have a hat on… indoors.

A volunteer doesn’t lead ‘that thing’ exactly the way we wanted them to lead ‘that thing’ and we get critical and frustrated.

It’s only 500 bucks!

Come on people. Let’s grow up. Be sensible.

Do your best to be an “overlooker” when it comes to wrongs.

Be respectable and forgive.