I stood there stunned for a moment.
She was the nanny? THE NANNY?
You mean, she wasn’t a struggling young mom trying to make ends meet?
You mean, those weren’t even HER kids?
HUH?
Slowly I loaded my own groceries into my own much older, far more used, not even close to as luxurious SUV, returned the cart to whatever that cart storage thing is called and climbed into my car.
I sat there for a long time. I didn’t know whether to cry or to laugh. So I did a little of both.
How could that have happened?
I felt like I had gotten it all wrong.
And as I sat there in my car, alternating between feeling dumbfounded over the fact that I had just paid a grocery bill for people who were probably a lot more well off than I was and wiping away tears of confusion, I began to question God.
Did I misinterpret the ‘nudging’ and the ‘stirring’ ? I was so convinced, so sure that this young woman truly needed help, MY help, and that I was blessing her by paying for her groceries.
I knew that what I had felt stirring in me was definitely from the Lord.
“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” John 14:26
So, how could I have totally missed the mark?
You see, at this particular time in my life, I had been experiencing a real sense of being dry in my faith. Stalled. Stale. And when I had listened to the nudging and felt so thrilled that I was able to help someone it felt like a kind of ‘mountaintop’ experience. You know the ones, right? Where you feel like you are on top of the world and it’s just so thrilling and satisfying!
So, to basically fall straight down that mountainside right onto the hard ground left me feeling very defeated.
But, the longer I sat there, the more aware I was of another stirring in my soul. One that led to a very specific question repeatedly running around and around in my head.
WHAT IF?
What if my paying those groceries had impacted that cashier?
What if it stirred something in the heart of the nanny?
or
What if it was actually just for my own benefit?
Stay with me here.
During this season of dry-ness in my soul, that nudging was like turning on a faucet and feeling the cool water pour over all of the parched places.
It was the realization that no matter how dry, how parched, how stale I thought my faith had become, because I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, I have been given the great gift of His Spirit living inside me. And that means that below the surface of what felt like a desert, there was ‘living water’.
And, “Whoever believes in me, as scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” John 7:38
What if paying for those groceries was simply God’s way of reminding me that He was there.
He’s there with me on those mountaintops and He’s there with me in the desert.
What if it had less to do with everyone else and more to do with me?
If the nanny was blessed by it? Bonus! If that cashier was blessed by it? Double bonus!
But, at the end of the day I was the one who was really given the biggest blessing of all.
***
This article originally appeared at At the Picket Fence.
