What is God like?
God is like the old lady who has found what she has been looking for…
There was once old lady who lost some money. This wasn’t just change it was £30; half the money she had left in the house until she picked up her benefits at the beginning of next week. It was the money she would use to buy the little food she needed for her and her disabled son until the following Monday. It was the money that helped feed the electricity and gas meter and, importantly for her, the money that meant she could give 50p each Saturday morning to her grandson.
She didn’t have much money, she was poor but happy. What money the old lady had, was spent just surviving, she had little savings. She was desperate to be able to heat the house, which was getting colder each day with the coming winter, and to be able to give her six year old grandson some money; money she knew he looked forward to receiving nearly as much as she loved giving to him. So she set about going through the house, she was very careful, checking the places she had been in the last 24 hours and looking underneath furniture and in draws. She looked upstairs and she looked downstairs. The old lady tidied the house until it was spotlessly clean. Having looked everywhere with no joy she decided she would vacuum the sofa, having looked under the cushions earlier and seen all the dirt when she had been searching for the money. She lifted one cushion, moved the knozzle around the sofa, along the back and then down the side, FALUN, FALUN, two pieces of paper vanished up the pipe of the cleaner and into the bag. She couldn’t be 100% sure but she thought she caught a glimpse of what looked like a £10 note. “Why hadn’t she seen them before?” She had looked there, she was sure of it.
The old lady set the vacuum cleaner on the floor. She opened it up so she could see the opening of the bag. There, dusty and a little crumpled, but still as crisp as they were when she had picked the money up from the post office, were a £20 and £10 note. She couldn’t believe it. She called to her son, “I’ve found the money, I’ve found the money, I thought I had lost it”. She called her daughter to share the good news. She was so pleased that she invited her daughter and grandson around to join her and her son for a meal. She went out and bought some nice meat even spending a bit of her meagre savings to buy some extras such as a bottle of lemonade.
As she walked home from the shop she thought about how blessed she was to have such a great family and be able to share this special meal with them. Her thoughts lingered in particular on the smile that she pictured her grandson would give her when she gave him his pocket money. She smiled inside and went home to cook the celebration meal.
