When I was about seven years old, I had an exciting goal! Mom had given me a little round tub with a plastic lid, and I was going to save up $10.00 in it to give to missionaries. Although there weren’t very many ways to make money, I did what I could — things like pulling weeds in the front yard for a penny each and watching sidewalks and parking lots carefully for any coins that someone may have accidentally left behind. I also looked for coins on the floor inside stores, but anytime I found one, I was sure to tell a cashier about it. (Since it was inside the store, it wasn’t rightfully mine, unless a store worker said I could keep it.) Sometimes the cashier would tell me to keep it, but other times she would simply thank me for finding it and add it to the collection of other coins in her money drawer.
After a long time went by (or at least it felt like a long time), I finally had a total of $9.67 — just 33 cents away from my goal! I don’t honestly remember if I was praying about my project before that point, but when I got to $9.67, I decided to pray very specifically for the last 33 cents that were needed to reach the goal. A short time after I started praying, my mom, with my siblings and I, made another trip to the grocery store. I was on the lookout for anything that might be a part of God’s answer to my prayer for 33 cents!
As we walked through the store aisles, I suddenly saw something that thrilled me and surprised me at the same time. It was a $1.00 bill on the floor of a main aisle of one of the busiest grocery stores in town. Besides the fact that I had never before and have never since seen that much money just lying on the floor in a store or parking lot, I could hardly believe that no one had seen it and picked it up before I did.
As usual, I took what I had found to the cashier, wondering if she would thank me for finding it and put it into the money drawer, but really believing that she would say I could keep it. My heart and mouth overflowed with thanks to God when she said it was mine! God had given me more than three times the amount I had asked for. He had answered my prayer exceeding abundantly above all I could ask or think!
Children, do you ever pray about things that you or someone else needs? I hope you know that the Lord cares very much about every detail of your life, even if it’s only 33 cents, and He loves to hear children’s prayers and answer them. “This is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us” (1 John 5:1414And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: (1 John 5:14)).
Messages of God’s Love 3/28/2021