Recently a friend of mine witnessed the miraculous healing of her unborn son’s umbilical cord. I know her from playgroup, so this past week we remembered what the Lord did for this little boy by building an altar. It’s biblical. Look in the Old Testament and you’ll find that all sorts of people built altars to God when they wanted to remember something that he had done. Remember Jacob’s dream of a ladder to heaven? The next morning he took some stones and resurrected an altar so that he would be reminded that God met with him in that place. Our altar could have been made of rocks or stones. I’m sure the little guys would have loved that! But our way of remembering and celebrating, in true pregnant-lady fashion, was to eat some brownies. The Lord did something miraculous for us this week and I too would like to remember. It seemed that a blog post was the best kind of altar I could build.
God has done some amazing things for our family, most of which revolve around provision. Some of what He has done is outrageously miraculous—$1,000 cash given to us at just the right time of month or a new violin when the old one just wasn’t cutting it any longer—and some look a bit mundane on the outside–the grocery store sales that just so happen to coincide with the meals I planned for the week…and no, I don’t look at the circulars!—but no matter how ordinary there’s always a little core of the divine shimmering out of the nooks and crannies of each situation. In our family, God’s provision for our daily bread radiates “divine intervention” just like those leftover baskets of bread and fish that Jesus’ disciples picked up one day
And now to the altar…I would like to remember that this week, we paid a grand (rounded off) total of $7 out of pocket for two weeks’ worth of groceries. How is this possible? Well, it’s maybe a bit like money laundering—although, admittedly, I know very little about the subject—all I know is that with a couple of monetary gifts and a lot of favor from the Lord He provided for our very basic need. No small feat if you ask me, especially in Westchester County, New York.
I will admit that I was a bit uncertain of how the monetary gifts could cover the costs of basic grocery items. I thought for sure that we’d be under budget, but four stores and four receipts later I have been proven wrong.
Here’s how it worked out…
Store #1—Budget=$50 (the list included diapers and wipes for two little ones); We paid $1.25 in cash.
Store #2—We paid $5.
Store #3—Budget=$100; We spent $83.
Store #4—Budget=$25; We paid $0.94 (and the cashier even gave us an extra penny, insisting that her computer read $0.93)
I suppose that if I were more attentive I would have realized before this very moment that, although we spent $7 out of pocket we were still $17 under budget. So gifts, groceries, and all we're about $10 ahead...did I do the math right???
While this week was a little more unusual than most, this kind of things happens to us nearly every week. We simply ask for things to be on sale, for the Lord to stretch our provision, and He does. Time and time again, He shows us His faithfulness and enables us to trust Him more and more with finances and every other area of our lives. It’s a simple testimony, and not the most elegant altar, but I choose to remember this every day miracle. And I praise the God who saw fit to consider our pantry enough to enable our groceries to be bought “off the books”. Praise the Lord!
P.S. He even threw in some ice cream and peanut butter cup brownies just for fun.
