Dad decided he needed to pay his sister a quick visit, so we took a few minutes to visit with her, then continued homeward. After a brief warm-up by the fire, I went to my purse to give Mum my board. But the pay packet wasn't there!
In a flash, I realised what had happened. The money had been on my lap and I'd dropped it onto the road when I got out of the car at my aunt's house. After I had tearfully poured out my tale of woe to Mum and Dad, we decided to go back to my aunt's to see if we could find at least some of the lost money.
The weather was still the same as it had been an hour earlier--wet and very windy. We had a prayer with my aunt and uncle, telling God how much we trusted Him and asking Him to help us find the missing money. We then started what many would have considered a fruitless search of the neighbourhood.
Five torchlight beams combed gutters, fences and footpaths. The road we were searching formed a "Y," so the wind had the choice of three directions in which to blow the flimsy notes.
Suddenly a shout--"I've found one"--challenged the wind for supremacy in the noise department. What rejoicing! "Thank you, God. What a miracle!"
Then, "I've found one too." Nine times that night, the words "I've found one" rang out above the wind. The wet notes were found slapped against power poles, flattened against fences, trapped against the side of the gutter while the rain water rushed along or wrapped around the spindly trunks of trees on the grass berm--in all manner of places where only the What happened to the 10th--the tithe? I don't know--but I believe someone found it who needed it more than I did.
Many years have passed since that night but the joy of realising that God cared enough to perform a miracle, enabling us to find nine of the lost notes, will remain with me forever. For nothing is impossible with God. Luke 1:37. Phyl Richards lives with her husband on the Kapiti Coast, New Zealand.
