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Next, I went to a nearby dry-goods store, planning to purchase a few balls of knitting yarn with the remaining $5. Upon entering the store, however, I discovered that my wallet was missing.
Although I retraced the steps I had taken since leaving the grocery store, I was unable to find my wallet and could not purchase any yarn. Troubled and disappointed, I returned home and unloaded the groceries I had bought.
While I was preparing supper, the telephone rang. The call was from one of the stores I had passed on my way to the dry-goods store. "Did you lose something today?" I was asked.
"Yes. I lost my wallet," I responded.
"It's in our store," the caller continued. "Someone found it and turned it in. It's at the front counter."
Relieved, I immediately drove down to the store to pick up my wallet. The $5 were still in the wallet, but it was too late in the day by then to purchase the knitting yarn.
In the evening, after the dishes had been cleared away, I sat down to study the Sunday school lesson I was going to teach to a class of primary students the next morning. It was a lesson on tithing.
While studying the lesson, I suddenly understood what had happened that day. "The first $5 of the $50 I earned this week were not mine. They were the Lord's!" I exclaimed to myself. "The $5 still in my wallet are actually not what was left over after buying groceries, but what belonged to God before I spent the rest!" I realized that God had prevented me from spending His money. He wanted me to put into practice what I was going to teach others.
At Sunday school the next morning, we had our usual introductory exercises of singing, praying and receiving the offering. Then I taught the lesson on tithing. At the close of the lesson, I told the children about my experience the previous day.
Immediately after hearing my story, one six-year-old girl, inwardly convicted, came forward and silently placed a coin in the offering box. I observed her in silence also. This was her response to having heard from God. I did not want to interfere in what He was doing in her spirit. I assumed that she had been holding back the money her parents had given her for the offering that morning, intending to spend it on a treat for herself later on.
I was deeply humbled to realize that God had allowed me to learn a lesson myself in order that He could use me to help a young child learn a lesson too. The lesson I had learned was not so much a lesson on tithing as it was a lesson on being a doer of the Word and not a hearer only (James 1:22). I realized that I could only effectively teach others to do what I practised myself.
Agatha Ratzlaff attends Mountain Park Community Church in Abbotsford, B.C.
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