How Much Are Those Eggs in the Carton?

When I was little, my grandmother would take me to the grocery store. She could give me a verbal list of some of the items on her larger, handwritten list, and I would go across the store, and collect the items. Two things were notable about this. One, I didn’t zigzag back and forth across the store, getting one item here and one item there. I went in order. Two, I knew exactly what brand my grandmother got of anything. She found that particularly astounding.

I don’t know how I knew to do what I did. I just did it. However, I do remember a conversation my grandmother and I had about buying eggs. “If the large eggs are no more than seven cents more expensive than the medium eggs, the large eggs are the better buy,” she explained. Nowadays, with inflation, this doesn’t always work, and for that reason, I stick to buying medium eggs when shopping with my mother. On occasion, though, I do notice only a seven-cent difference between the two, and I’ll smile, think of my grandmother, and grab the large eggs.

Thinking of weighing the cost of those eggs reminds me of how, as Christians, we should weigh the cost of sin. One little thing can sometimes reap so many consequences, the worst of which is death (Romans 6:23, James 1:15). Sin rarely is worth the trouble, isn’t it? The guilt that inevitably ensues just makes matters even worse. There’s an old saying that goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” How much less complicated would our lives be if we stopped to think and weigh the cost more often?