God Knows Your Hearts Desires

Over on my friend, Revee's blog Country Roads she tells about how God blessed her with a tea pot. It reminded me of something that happened in our lives. I thought I would share it.

My son, Joshua loves history, especially the Civil War. Since he was homeschooled, we were able to cater to this interest. He had lots of books on the subject. He started out a die hard Yankee. As he read and researched and listened to others, he relaxed on that and really came to see the war as his mother does... The War of Northern Agression!!! =) Hey, settle down, it will be all right. Anyway, back to the story. We went to different battlefields on vacation and he collected memorabilia. When he was about 9 or 10 he decided that he wanted a Big Bang Cannon. He was an only child and we were able to do a bit more for him than if we had many children, but this cannon was $50. It does not really shoot anything, it just make a VERY LOUD noise and you see a bit of smoke and flame. We told him that we were not going to spend $50 on that cannon.

We were at church one morning, several months later. An older woman in the church came up to me before the service and asked me if there was anything that Joshua really wanted. All I could think of was that cannon. I was not about to tell her about the cannon because it was so expensive. I told her I would have to think about it. All through church my mind was racing (yes, I know I should have been listening to the sermon) trying to come up with anything other than that cannon. I could not think of a thing. I tried to avoid her after church, but she hunted me down. =) She asked me if I had thought of something. I couldn't lie, but I did not want to tell her about the cannon. So, what I did say was something along the lines of... "Well, I did think of one thing, but it costs a lot of money and I don't want to say what it is." She handed me cash that was folded up and said, is this enough? After shipping, there would be 5 cents left from what she handed me. I told her it was almost exactly the right amount. She said, "You tell Joshua that God loves him and wanted him to have the desire of his heart." She made sure that I would never tell her name, because she said it was not from her, but from God. I ordered the cannon and saved it for his birthday which was about a month away. That was one year that he had a party. He had opened all his gifts and was thrilled. Then we told him that he had one more gift and that it was from God. We told him and the other children that God had layed it on someone's heart to give the money to buy the desire of Joshua's heart. Joshua knew that His Heavenly Father cared about Him and wanted to bless him.