Well yesterday was inventory. Economics has always interested me in forms and fashions. Retail stores of course operate by selling various selections of merchandise at a price that is higher than what they purchased it for. It isn't unethical. Because of their quantity and consistency vendors, publishers, wholesalers, etc. offer them products at a cost that they would not offer a normal customer. And so all retail stores succeed or fail, by how effectively they make money, by sales, from what they spend, by purchasing product (as well as payroll, fixed costs, etc.)

While cycles revolve of sales and restocking of inventory (ie product) each store keeps an idea of what they have sitting on their shelf. This is called their inventory and most of the year it exists in the form of a soft number. If I had this on Monday, and I got another one of these on Tuesday, and I sold one of those over there on Wednesday, On Thursday I should have this plus one of these minus one of those. (Confused yet? :) In short you can spend the year adding what you buy and subtracting what you sell, but there has to be a time when you definitively measure everything you have so you have a more accurate number to add to and subtract from.

And so this time of the year is very important for retailers. Their inventory measurement will reflect on the way they have run their business, how well they have sold things at the right time, and what potential sales they can have for the next year.

At 6pm yesterday evening an outside auditor came to perform our yearly inventory. There were many of them, but they weren't as skilled as they should have been, so they didn't finish until 5:45 am this morning. Now some of you may know that I live about 40 minutes away from the store that I work at and when viewed in the light that we had a shipment of new merchandise coming in at 7am this morning I had an hour and fifteen minutes before I had to be back to work. So I went to IHOP and had a little breakfast. ( I did get to leave work at 11am this morning, so I was only there for 23 hours :).

As I sat at IHOP though I read from the book of James. The scripture came to life inside those dead bones, "Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works." Bro Benson had preached Sunday morning in Bro McLaughlins absence on Not Being Weary in Well Doing. One thing that echoed so true was that "our good works are the world's proof of our power." I was tired and drowsy, and I almost fell asleep before I got my food. But how merciful is our God to even when my enthusiasm was lacking to still speak to me. To still remind me that it really is putt up or shut up. I remember the playground banter of ain't nothin to do but do it. Whatever smack your giving me, whatever you think you will do with that basketball or rather with your faith, ain't nothin to do but do it.