Yesterday afternoon we stopped in a little Illinois town called Poplar Grove. They have a fun little roadside stand there with all sorts of Fall-ish things. Delicious apples, fat pumpkins, cute scarecrows, warty gourds. We were very touristy and pulled out the camera. We are on our Fall Tour after all. We also bought a bag of apples.
Who knew buying apples could be so dangerous?
This morning we woke up and realized that our wallet was missing. As in I-tore-apart-the-van-and-shook-the-chairs-upside-down-and-I-still-can’t-find-it missing. With $100 in cash. Guess where we’d seen it last?
We jumped in our van and drove back to Poplar Grove.
We didn’t talk much on the way there. I don't know about everyone else, but I was mostly trying to figure out what sort of frame of mind I needed to be in to convince God that it would be really good if He got us our wallet and our money back. We are homeless missionaries after all.
Once in Poplar Grove, Lisa jumped out of the van and went to ask about the missing wallet. I watched her from the van and didn’t see any impromptu gymnastics. I figured that meant bad news.
Sure enough. No wallet.
Way to go, God.
I turned the van around and pulled out of the parking lot. Put the brakes on at the stop sign. And very nearly ran over a wallet lying in the middle of the road. Guess whose wallet?
I looked God’s way and sniffed.
We opened the wallet and looked inside. All the important things - driver’s license, credit card, social security - were all there. The only thing missing was the hundred dollars. Apparently, God wasn’t too concerned about us running out of funds.
At this point, we had a quarter tank of gas left, four hours worth of road to travel, and exactly ten dollars to our name. Somehow the math wasn’t quite adding up. We asked God what He wanted us to do (now that He had us pinned), jumped back in the van, and started driving. Stopped to invest our ten dollars in oil and kept going. We figured we could make it to Chicago. God was going to have to do something after that.
We were alright with it. Well, sort of. But we didn’t have much of a choice, so we were doing our best to look God in the face without glaring. But the people we were supposed to be meeting with that day were still in the dark. I started down the list of phone calls. “Uh, yeah, hi, so about that lunch date . . . Yes, we are on our way right now . . . Um, not sure when we’ll make it . . . Yes, we’re driving. Yep, straight towards you. Only . . . well, we don’t have enough gas to get there.”
Third time around on that conversation, I was getting kinda tired of saying it.
That’s when our friend offered to get us gas money. Well, first he offered to drive three hours to fill our van up. Then he had a better idea. Something called MoneyGram. Yeah, I had never heard of it either. Basically, it means he used technology, and we got to walk into the grocery store and carry out some money. Guess how much?
Exactly one hundred dollars. We hadn’t breathed a single word to him about how much money we’d lost. You can’t convince me that God doesn’t take care of those who trust in Him.
. . . That’s also the most expensive bag of apples I’ve ever seen.
