I shared, last night, about the cashier who clearly didn’t understand the basics of percentage discounts. Had her math teacher witnessed the incident, he or she would surely have been appalled, and if her employer had seen? Hopefully someone can help her understand before it happens again.

As is common, God used this practical experience to remind me of a great truth. We must prepare for life ahead of time. The math lessons should have been fully learned before the customer stood in front of her with a 50% off item. Likewise, God tells us in II Tim 2:15 to study ahead of time: This is how we are prepared to face life events before we reach them. Whether it’s a sudden battle with cancer or an ongoing conversation about salvation, a question about which action would best please God or how to fight a battle, all of the information we need is right there, in His Word.

Yes, as some would say, His Word is at our fingertips and we can look it up, but a Bible won’t always be immediately at hand (as the cashier’s calculator must not have been) and the Bible you don’t know will be of limited help to you.

It is the math student’s responsibility to learn the difference between 40% and 50%, and know how to calculate both, however…it is not always the student alone who pays the price when she fails. (I paid an extra .25 because I wasn’t willing to give a math lesson.) When we fail to study God’s Word, to make it part of our lives, we pay…  whether or not we notice the price being paid; and we are not the only ones affected. Those who surround us, those who come in contact with and are not helped by us… they pay a price too.

Celebrating Jesus!
Tammy C