Although I don’t usually scrutinize my grocery receipts, this weekend after arriving home with my bags I did, because the total seemed so low. That’s when I realized the check-out girl hadn’t charged me for a small rose plant I’d bought as a Mother’s Day gift.

Since I was on a tight schedule and the store was a 30 minute round trip from home, I didn’t have time to go back. And if I had, two things might have happened, making me wish I hadn’t. (1) The cashier might have gotten in trouble, and (2) the store manager might have said, “Don’t worry about it.”

So I did nothing.

The next day I explained it all to Mary, complaining about the inconvenience of having to go back to the store since I knew the right thing to do was pay what I owed. “You know,” she said, “it’s funny how that seems inconvenient now, but when I had kids living at home, I used to literally pray for opportunities just like that one. It was the perfect chance to teach something important without saying a word.”

She was right. Children watch us closely, “catching” the values we live out in front of them. Maybe, I thought, if I corrected the payment problem of the rose plant, someone I didn’t even know might “be watching.”

The day after my rose non-purchase, I had another list of errands, this one in the opposite direction. Last on my list was to head back to the rose store to settle up. When I finally got there, I walked over to the display of rose plants from which I’d “bought” the first one the day before. Pondering the best way to make things right, I decided to buy a second plant and let the checker scan it twice rather than go through the manager, causing trouble for the young girl who’d forgotten to charge me.

That girl wasn’t on duty, so I chose a young boy cashier and briefly explained that I wanted to pay for the plant I’d gotten for free the day before. “So,” I said, “why don’t you just scan this one twice,” I said, handing him the plant.

“Really?” he said, looking me in the eye. He picked up the plant, waved it over the scanner, then held it in the air, ready to do it again. Looking back at me he said, “You sure?”

“Yes,” I said,  “because if I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t sleep tonight, you know?”

“I suppose,” he said, swiping it a second time.

“And if I let myself get away with it this time, it would be easy to do it again some other time.”

“Maybe,” he said, slowly bagging the plant, not entirely convinced.

But as I turned to go, he said, “Hey… I appreciate what you just did.”

When I got in the car, I looked at the receipt. Amazingly, this one seemed low, too. Actually it was. Between yesterday and today, the roses had been marked down to half price, so I ended up with two…. for the price of one.

“Better to be poor and honest than to be dishonest and a fool.” (Proverbs 19:1)