The other day one of my grandsons and I were reading a story together from the Bible. When we finished reading and after some discussion, he said, “Grammy, what if there is really no God and the Bible is not true?”

I answered him with a few historic facts and a few examples about God’s sovereignty from the Bible, and then I recalled a personal story that I hoped would help him understand one of the reasons that I personally knew there was and is a “real God.”

“Your Gramps was asked by a fellow pastor to pray about and consider a move to a church in a large city to help organize a growth program for his church which had lost it’s neighborhood and now was surrounded by bulk plants and interstate highways. As I recall, the decision was a very hard one to make because we were very fond of the church where your Gramps was the pastor. He had been the pastor there almost five years and we had many friends and experiences there. Also, your dad and his sister were very active with the school basketball program, it was the middle of a school year and on top of that, I owned a specialty shop.”

“Moving day finally arrived after several months of crying, praying, planning and packing. However, the move to the large city produced some surprises for us that we just had not expected which left us in a financial bind. Rather than put the children in a large school in the middle of the school year, we enrolled them in a Baptist academy near our new home. Added to the expense of that school was the transportation and gasoline to get Gramps north to the church each morning and you dad and his sister the opposite direction. My shop was still open in Arkansas and I was responsible for those expenses connected to a business.”

“Now that you have the big picture, let me move on to the rest of the story. This one particular Friday after getting the family off, I finished my Bible study and went into the kitchen to think about meals for the family and the expected weekend company. Looking through the refrigerator and pantry, I could see nothing that I could mix up or stretch to feed seven people for three days. Nothing was: no flour, sugar, no meat, no vegetables except several home canned green beans, no coffee, no tea and according to the checking account, no money to buy anything. In disgust, I said and I vividly remember this, ‘God can’t you even provide a loaf of bread?’ You would probably find this hard to believe if you could have seen where we lived because we lived in a beautiful brick ranch style home in a cull-d-sac of beautiful homes with three cars parked in the driveway. Our outward appearances looked in keeping with “upper middle class” people.”

“Not being able to solve the problem, I went into my sewing room and began my workday. You see Grammy not only made curtains and quilts locally, but also still made items to sell at the shop in Arkansas. Since most of what I earned went back to supporting the store, your Gramps’ salary was stretched to the limit”.

“About an hour later, the doorbell rang. When I opened the door, there was a lady standing there holding a loaf of homemade bread. Well, my eyes immediately filled with tears and the lady standing there holding this loaf of bread had a puzzled look on her face. She asked if she had come at a bad time. I assured her that she had not come at a bad time and welcomed her into the living room. After we sat down, I asked her, ‘Why did you come today and how is it that you brought me a loaf of bread?’ Of course she was a little surprised at my question, but I told her it was an answer to a prayer that morning. So she explained that when she finished her Bible study and prayer that morning, I had came to her mind. (I had met her the previous week at a ladies prayer gathering) she decided to make a visit to get better acquainted. As she continued to tell me about bringing the bread, she said she was walking through her kitchen on the way out the door and glanced over at the bread she had cooling on the kitchen counter. She decided she only needed the one loaf for her families dinner that night and would bring the other loaf as a get-acquainted gift for my family”.

“As I then shared with her my conversation with the Lord that morning, we were both overwhelmed by God’s immediate response and had to laugh at the humor. That, my grandson, was an immediate response by a ‘real God’.”

“But the story doesn’t end there, God continued to work all day long on behalf of that challenge for bread. The humor became more obvious as day progressed. The lady called me on the phone later that day to share with me that several weeks earlier the Lord had convicted her about spending too much money at the grocery store. You see her husband gave her a weekly amount to spend and she would spend it all whether they needed it or not. At the Lord’s prompting, she began each week to only buy just what was needed for the week and nothing more. She went on to say that she had asked the Lord several times what He was having her save this money for, but she had not seen an answer until today. She wanted to know if I would be offended if she brought me the money she had been saving?”

“Well, I told her that after all that had happened so far, I didn’t think I would be offended because the truth of the matter was I thought I probably needed a little butter for the bread and we both laughed. So when my daughter got home from school, we quickly went through coupons and grocery store ads to find what was on sale that we also had a coupon for. We made our list and off we went as fast as we could go before our company arrived.”

“When we got home, we had spent all but just a few cents of the $35.00 that the lady had given us. I was very pleased that we had been able to purchase what we thought was enough food to make the weekend. While I was putting away the groceries and starting the dinner, my daughter came back in the kitchen from checking through the house to see that everything was ready for company. She had a very perplexed look on her face as she said mother, ‘Neither bathroom has any toilet paper’!”

“So here we are looking in the cracks of chairs and sofas for enough change to run back to the store for toilet paper and the doorbell rings! After hugs and kisses, my friend asked me to come and help her bring in the food. Well I’m saying, ‘ What food?’ She said she had cooked a roast and some other things. (She commented that she had been to the preacher’s house before. Now, what do you suppose she meant by that?? Spaghetti?)We went with her to her car and when she opened the trunk, there in the top of the grocery sack was…….you guessed it, toilet paper!”

“Grandson, God provided bread, money for food, toilet paper and more food, but most of all God provided immediate relief with humor. I hope you liked and will remember Grammy’s story about how she knew God was a ‘real God’.”

Philippians 4:18, 19 Paul said, “I have received everything in full, and have an abundance; I am amply supplied…And my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”