Invitation to Treat – Gochugaru Girl

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

It is August, when in England the days are longer (sometimes even sunnier) and people go on holiday en famille to inland and far-flung places. Having been away for so much of this year, I need to stay in London to catch up with a few home projects.

First off, replacing the back panels of a sideboard which were water damaged by damp from the wall it was sited next to. Minor touch-ups, painting and decorating some walls. There is a lot of cleaning to do which is relentless. The moment you rest your bottom on the chair another layer of fine dust would have appeared on all the surfaces around you. This is the price of living a connected city life.

But I am tired and want to rest also. So I joined a gym with a swimming pool, largely ignoring the former and mainly focusing on the latter. After this morning’s swim I went to Waitrose on the Marylebone High Street and spotted my favourite British fruit for this time of the year i.e. plums.

You may know (perhaps mentioned somewhere in a previous post) that I read Law at university. Crucial to the understanding of first year Contract Law is the concept of an invitation to treat. The price displayed in the photo above (Essential Loose Plums £4 per kg) is not an offer. Technically it is an invitation to treat. If I like the sound of this, I will bring the bag of plums to the check-out counter. At that point I am making an offer to the supermarket (represented by the check-out assistant) of something to the effect of ‘I am making an offer to buy these plums for a price of £4 a kilo’. By putting the plums on the weighing scales and charging me for them, they are accepting my offer.

But in this instance the price came up as £4.50 per kg. To cut a long story short, I told Waitrose they should charge me £4 per kg, as advertised. Being very nice they accepted this request. Their explanation was that the price had changed between their posting the price on the shelf and charging at the till.

On the way home I marvelled at how God’s offer of salvation never changes. Psalm 103 (verses 10-12 below) tells us what God is like:

He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

I am so reassured when I read these verses, that God can remove every wrong I have ever committed and consign them to the dustbin of grace. But what kind of offer is this and how do we accept?

For this, we need to turn to Jesus Christ, who was God in human form. Many people will be familiar with the promise of John 3 v 16: For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

The way I see it, this verse is an invitation to treat. I appreciated it so much that I took this ‘bag of plums’ to God’s counter and said, ‘Yes, please, I would like eternal life’. In my case, as in every case, God said, ‘Sure, welcome to my Kingdom’. No variations to the original invitation to treat. Life should always be as straightforward as this.

If you have made it this far, please be rewarded with the following two legal cases which all first year Law students (then) had to commit to memory:

Carlill v Carbolic Smoke Ball Company [1893]

Pharmaceutical Society of GB v Boots Cash Chemists (Southern) Ltd [1953]