Opportunity Cost

Last night was the first night of ECON233 at Bethel College. We packed 4 chapters worth of material into about 3 hours so this made for a pretty intense evening. Okay, so I'm a self-professed dork and actually found this material pretty interesting. The graphs, the examples, the case studies all seemed quite relevant. However, I was also quite frustrated. Why? I started thinking about other things that I could be doing... walking or maybe even riding bike with a friend, reading Chronicles of Narnia, sleeping, thinking about student ministry material for Thursday night (by the way, I'd like to get a post up about tonight at some point), and on goes the list. Then, right before my eyes appears two words: opportunity cost.

"Opportunity cost is the best alternative sacrificed for a chosen alternative. Stated differently, it is the cost of not choosing the next best alternative."

Ruminate on this one for awhile.

Right now, I'm taking a few minutes to blog about opportunity cost. What else could have been done during those few minutes? Laundry, dishes, sweeping, calling a friend - these are just a few of the possibilities - the alternatives sacrificed for these few minutes of blogging.

Okay, maybe blogging is a pretty simplistic example, but seriously, what would happen if I took an inventory of my time throughout the week? What would happen if I took an inventory of the time in the week that Jesus is the "next best alternative" instead of the "chosen alternative?" Hmm. Not too pleasant of a thought. The cost would be pretty high.

Good night.