Opinion

His mysterious ways

Saturday, January 17, 2009

A lady from Garden City shared the following true story with me.

It seems that her brother was a cameraman for a television station in western Kansas. He received a call to do a story regarding a church and the preacher's wife in Scott City. The rest of the story goes like this:

The preacher's wife happened to be the choir director and, like in many small churches, there was always a shortage of funds. She was worrying about how they were going to come up with enough money to decorate the church properly for Christmas. To that end, she was praying daily that somehow, someway the church would find a way.

Meanwhile, out on the highway, there was a truck driver delivering a load of poinsettias to a flower shop in southwest Kansas. In the middle of his trip, he received a call from his dispatcher saying that there had been a mix-up and the shop had already received their poinsettias from another supplier, and he was to return home.

The driver's natural response was, "What am I supposed to do with this truckload of flowers?"

Dispatch replied, "We can't take them back, so find somebody to give them to."

He just happened to be in Scott City when he received the call. Finding a nearby church, he got out of his truck, walked across the street, and went in as the preacher's wife and the choir were in the process of practicing.

The woman asked him, "can I help you?"

He went through the story briefly and said, "I have a load of poinsettias I need to get rid of."

She quietly asked him how much he was selling them for.

He replied, "No ma'am, understand I am giving these away; my boss told me to just give these to somebody."

At that point, she said, "my prayers have been answered."

So they unloaded the truck and decorated the church, and all the while the choir members joked with her saying, "could we give you a list of other things we would like you to pray for?"

In that small town in western Kansas, the Christmas decorations in the church that year were something special as they represented an answered prayer.