As our travel fund wasn’t too substantial we were always on the look out for a bargain. We found breakfast to be the best deal of the day, most cafes offered a 99 cent breakfast with a short stack of pancakes and unlimited coffee. It became our staple diet for the weeks we were on the road, it filled us up at the beginning of the day then a jam (jelly) sandwich on the bus kept us going.
I remembered the words of the immigration officer at the airport when we arrived in the United States at the beginning of our journey she said “You do realize you will have to live very frugally with the money you have, if you intend to be here for 3 months.”
Frugality was never a problem for me I was trained up in it by my mum, I have always lived within a budget and have often found myself picking up an extravagant cream cake or something like it only to retrace my steps at the supermarket and put it back before going through the check out. Unfortunately though this mind set restricted me in my relationship with God, I always believed that God would meet our needs but it took a God incident in 1993 to open my eyes to the generosity of God.
I never owned any jewelry except for my wedding ring then one Sunday in a church meeting the lady sitting in front of me turned and told me that she believed God wanted to give me a ring. She explained that she had admired it in the jewelers for weeks and that she had been paying money for it for months until finally that weekend she had been able to collect it. She had owned it for one day and God told her to give it to me. It was an exquisite ring with a single pearl in a white gold setting with diamonds unlike any ring I had ever seen before.
God spoke to me through this gift this is what He said ” I don’t just want to meet your needs I want to give you over and above that and I have ways to bless you that you have never dreamed of just expand your thinking and open up your heart to me and don’t restrict me by your small thinking.”
Every time I looked at that ring it reminded me of the amazing goodness of God and then about 6 years later He had me give it to another person and tell my story to her. Just to remind me that we are channels for God’s gifts not owners.
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