IN the first year of my married life.” relates, a pious German, “I had one day, not a farthing in the house, when my wife came and asked me for a thaler to pay the weaver who was to bring her some cloth in the evening.
The weaver was poor and there was not a person in the village of whom we could borrow money, and my wife unaccustomed to such embarrassments, burst into tears. I tried to comfort her by telling her that our heavenly Father knew what we needed and that perhaps the bad weather might prevent the weaver from coming that day.
I commended the matter to the Lord, for I saw no means of human help. In the evening I heard with sorrow the sound of the doorbell. My wife hastily entered the room and said;
“The weaver is here”!
I was going to sit down at the table, and was just taking down a book from the shelf above me, when at the very moment a piece of money rolled out of it, and fell rattling on the table. My wife and I stood motionless; we felt distinctly the presence of God, who so exactly knew what we needed, and bestowed it upon us at the very moment when we required it.
Sometime after, I remembered that about three months before, when I was carrying this book with several others, from the book store to my home, I met my brother-in-law on the way, who owed me a thaler, and as both of my hands were full of books, I asked him to put it inside the uppermost book. So the thaler’s falling out was quite natural. But that it should have been put in the book to help me in my hour of need, and did not fall out before, was a providential incident, the remembrance of which has cheered my wife and myself in many times of trial.”
Such timely providences are frequent in the experience of God’s people.
ML 03/08/1925