Read In Which Our Faith Is Strengthened by a Stranger first.

* * *

When I went through the mail this past Saturday, I was pleased to see a package from a writer friend of mine. I had recently edited her latest project, an informal compilation of stories, and she had promised to send me a copy when it was completed.

As usual, she had included other interesting pieces and the latest issue of the magazine she edits; getting a package from her is as much fun as Christmas. All this stuff to read when I should have been doing the dishes—it was a temptation worth yielding to, so I did. Because the words absorbed my attention, I didn’t see the money until I was hastily scrambling the papers together before going back to my pots and pans. Two bills fluttered out of the stack onto the table.

I froze. Blinked. Sure enough, they were still there. Two fifties. One hundred dollars.

God had covered the remaining $99.24.

Wherefore didst thou doubt, Stephanie? 

The money, my friend said, was payment for the editing I did for her in the last six months or so.

The timing, I thought, was God’s alone.

* * *

I sat, ignoring the dishes, holding the money, trembling inside.

My friend had included an accounting of the projects I had edited for her and the payment for each. Twenty dollars for this one, twenty-five for that one, and so on, for a total of ninety-five dollars. She had then added five dollars, marked it “Christmas gift,” and made it one hundred dollars even.

Her generosity had turned payment for services rendered into a miracle. Had she given only what she owed me, it would have been $4.24 short of our need. Details, insignificant and inconsequential, perhaps—after all, we could afford to pay $4.24 toward a medical bill—but my God is the King of Insignificant Details, and nothing is too small for His attention.

It shook me to my core.

Generosity begats generosity, and we had already been so blessed. Perhaps I could use some of this money to buy birthday gifts (very belated or very early, depending on how you looked at it) for my sisters. Both of them had frequently helped us with their time and resources during the last year. In February, one of them was taking off work for the entire ten days Tarica would be in the hospital so she would be available, either to help my mom take care of Micah or else to come out to Pittsburgh and assist me with Tarica.

It humbled me to always be the recipient. Perhaps I could find a special gift for them, an inadequate but heartfelt expression of my gratitude. I had wanted to buy them birthday gifts earlier in the year, but money for such extras had been and would continue to be scarce. But this—I could not hoard this generosity. Surely we could spare a little. I’d see what Linford said about it.

I returned to my dishes, still astounded by God’s attention to detail.

But the King of Insignificant Details is also King of Exceeding Abundantly, and He wasn’t finished.

Come back tomorrow for the next installment of grace.