When the phone rang at 11:15 pm I was still awake. It was Bobby, who had just left and was headed to work going north on Telegraph Road, our local 4 lane artery.
“You’re not going to believe what happened.” He said. “When I passed that little restaurant-bar, the one that attracts the motorcycle riders, one of them pulled out ahead of me. Then the car directly behind them hit something and it went flying in the air back towards me. I thought, “That looks like money!” So I turned around and went back. It must have fallen out of the motorcycle person’s pocket and hit the pavement. Then it got hit by the car in front of me. I picked it up…it was 60-80 dollars, Mary!”
I said, “Well, which is it, 60 or 80?”
“I’m not sure! I mixed it in with what I had in my wallet.”
As he talked, visions of how we could return the money danced in my head. Only for a second. There was really truly no reasonable way to return the money to the rightful owner. For one, they probably wouldn’t know where they lost it. Two, it might take a long time for them to realize they lost it to start with. So the question was, would we accept it like the sky was raining 20$ bills? Of course we would, thank you, Jesus!
A few nights later Bobby was on a crime scene in the dead of night. He looked over at a sidewalk. “What’s that?” He walked over. Sure enough, it was a 10 dollar bill.
After a night at work just a few days later, Bobby came home, parked the car and got out. “What’s that?” He walked over. It was two 1 dollar bills.
Daughter, Julie, has a little dresser her MawMaw gave her. Bobby’s been refinishing it, gluing it and fixing it up. He needed four wood clamps to finish the work and was going to the store to buy them. Pulling out of our subdivision he looked at the road ahead.
Well, not too long after all of this we needed some foam insulation strips to put around an air conditioning unit, the kind with adhesive on one side. Bobby planned to pick some up on the way home from work. That night, in the TV station parking lot, Bobby noticed huge sections of brand new silver duct work had been thrown out by the dumpster, left over from when the TV station had moved into the building and things had been remodeled. Curious, he walked over to look. One of the sections had a hole in it and he saw something inside. Naturally…..he reached in to see what it was. It was foam for our window, a huge roll of it. Of course!
So when our friends from Omaha, Tom and Susan, were visiting recently we told them this whole story. After dinner one night, and at their urging, we purchased, with Susan insisting on paying, 2 lottery tickets. Her thought was, “I’ll pay; Bobby can play.” And of course we would split our many millions… that went without saying. But I did not have high expectations. We had started out with money, 80 dollars worth and had ended up with foam. Odds were not in our favor.
Needless to say, we did not win. But it certainly has given me a lot of thought to God’s provision. Did we need the 80.00 Bobby found on the road? We certainly could have lived without it. Did we need the other 10, the 2, the clamps and the foam? We could have purchased those items without the bounty of the road spill, yes.
It is a picture, however, of our Heavenly Father, and how He promises to provide for our needs, most of which are not tangible like money and clamps and foam. Some of the things we think we need the most, we really don’t. Then there are those times I think God rains blessings down just to let us know He’s thinking of us, that He watches us. I know scripture doesn’t say it, but I do believe God gets a kick out of watching our reactions.
I don’t expect Bobby to find much on the roads he travels anymore. I think our little spilled blessings are over, at least for a while. But we still get a kick out of talking about it; it certainly rates a ‘10’ on the strange and weird scale, but in a really good way. And it makes me wonder why it happened.
I really think maybe it might have happened just so I can tell you about it, so you can think about it, too.
For our God provides. He really does.
May I ask you:
Where on your journey, your road, have you seen and found God’s blessing(s)?
Have you marked the spots so you’ll always remember?
Have you remembered to thank Him for His abundance?
And, lastly, but very importantly…are you watching carefully for more?
Keep your eyes open.
You wouldn’t want to miss it for the world.
