Ok, this is not like that fiasco on ebay for the grilled cheese sandwich which supposedly looked like Jesus. And it wasn't like we opened a box of ice cream and out came the Lords voice.....so read on to find out what really happened, right here in our own home.
Some background leading up to the scene:
Jeremiah and I had been having a discussion on finances. The topic was: our budget. Or more importantly the lack of actually following the budget. It's one thing to be on paper and another to actually be living by it. So we are discussing ways in which we can implement the budget in everyday life and what sacrifices we needed to make. (By golly he was not impressed with my idea of a straw bale house. I do think you all need to look those up as they are actually quite neat!) A little more background on our finances. We have been VERY, VERY blessed that Jeremiah has a very good job, one that pays well. We are however still living on one income. And we do have debt (I'm not talking about our mortgage), most of which are medical bills. And as we were going over each item we were faced with a temptation. To tithe or not to tithe. Basing the tithe on 10% of Jeremiah's income makes a rather nice lump of money, which in our weak moment was very tempting to put towards our debts instead of where God intended it. This is faith being walked out in real life. Trusting that God knows best, and His ways are always right. Humanly speaking it is absurd to take that money and give it away when we have bills that need paying. And the bills will get paid, just very slowly. It was very tempting to say, hey--we could knock off all these bills in x amount of months and be done with it! But I remember reading something this past year that kept repeating in my head as we were discussing this issue. It goes something like this: God can do more with 90% of your income, than you could do with 100! This is true, I know this in my heart, but my mind was arguing. So now we come to the ice cream. As we put all of this in print and laid out the plan it was very evident as to why we are always falling behind!! So we determined that we needed to lay low and sacrifice some things. We were planning on going out for ice cream that night. And now we realized that although that is a small trifle, it would go against our budget (please note that we had just gone to the zoo the day before, using all available family fun budgeting monies). So we quietly went about cleaning and not wanting to break the news to the kids that there would be no ice cream tonight. Not 30 minutes later we heard a knock on our door. We opened it to find a friend holding out a grocery bag with something inside. He said, "I was out shopping and figured you guys just needed this." I looked inside......yup, it was ice cream, two half gallons of it!!!!!! Jeremiah and I were just about speechless. We looked at each other in total disbelief, in total awe of knowing that the God of the heavens just spoke to us!! We indeed, going against human wisdom, did the right thing. Giving to God the things that are His. In His word He says we are to give of our first fruits. They are His to begin with. Wow, I am still in awe when I think of the ice cream.
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