Have you ever been very hungry and had nothing to eat? Who do you go to when you need food or water or anything else? If you are a child, you probably go to your mother or father and tell them. Parents are always happy to give you what you need, if they can. But what if they don’t have what you need?
This is a story from long ago of a father who had a great need, and he turned to God for help. God is a loving Father and is always ready to answer His children’s prayers, sometimes in unusual ways. Let’s see what happened.
The father in our story was a kind and loving daddy who hated to see his children have any need he couldn’t satisfy. Their mother was already in heaven, so he had to work very hard to take care of his family. He was a fisherman, but in stormy weather it was hard for him to catch enough fish to sell so he could buy the family’s food.
One winter, the weather was bad for so long that the family didn’t have any food left in the house and no money to buy more. The children cried because they were so hungry, and the poor father was terribly upset that he could not give them something to eat. So he prayed to God, because he loved God his Father and believed His words from the Bible, “Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God [feeds] them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?” (Luke 12:2424Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls? (Luke 12:24)). The father knew that God understood and cared that he didn’t have enough food for his children.
Sadly, the father lifted one of his hungry little girls onto his shoulders and took her outside for a walk. As he walked along, a pie man passed them. A pie man was a man who carried food on a tray on his head to sell to people on the street. Little Mary, who was on her father’s shoulders, saw the food going by on the pie man’s tray. Since she was quite hungry, she reached out to grab a cake. “No, my child,” her father said. “Those are not ours, and I have no money to buy you one.” Mary began to cry very hard and her father couldn’t comfort her, so he turned around to head sadly home.
Back at home when her father had put Mary down, he took off his heavy sailor’s jacket. As he tossed it aside, a large, bright coin rolled out of the pocket. At first he couldn’t believe his eyes or think where it could have come from. Then he remembered that just when Mary had been crying for the pie man’s treats, a woman had pushed into him. She, no doubt, had slipped the money in his pocket.
How glad and how thankful the father was to God for this answer to his prayers. He went out to buy food for his children as quickly as he could. Besides feeding them, he taught his children to thank God for the mercy and kindness He had shown them in giving them food.
ML-02/01/2009