CONTRIBUTED BY CHERYL VAWTER.

LISTENING TO GOD

This Sunday, on my way to work, I decided to stop at the Quik Stop gas station on Broadway near I30 for some coffee. As I was coming out of the store I saw a man admiring my little Smart Car.

“That’s a cool car. You get good gas mileage?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, it’s very economical,” I replied.
“It looks dangerous. . . . Is it fun to drive? . . . Where did you get it?” Then he asked, “Say, do you have a couple dollars you could spare? I’m trying to get to Fort Worth and I’m out of gas.”

Well, I did have a couple dollars in change from the coffee I just got, so I gave that to him.

As I opened the door to the car, I felt like I was supposed to put ten dollars of gas in his car. I put the coffee in the cup-holder and thought: “I was going to use that change for a sweet tea later this afternoon. I’ll just forgo the tea today and besides, I have three reports that I need to finish. It sure is windy today. It’s annoying when you fill-up the gas tank and the gas gauge in the car stops short of the full mark. I’m driving slower but I’ll still get to work on time. I wonder . . .”

I SAID: PUT TEN DOLLARS OF GAS IN HIS CAR.

I was turning on the access road to get on the highway to continue to work. I quickly turned to the right and entered the Walmart parking lot, then cut through a couple other parking lots and crossed another street to get back to the gas station. Sure enough, there was that man—apparently trying to solicit money from another guy. I knew that I couldn’t just give him ten dollars, so I parked the car and walked over to the guy who was now alone.

“God told me to put ten dollars of gas in your car, so if you will just pull your car around to the pump, I’ll go inside and pay the cashier.”

The man’s jaw had dropped and he said with difficulty: “I’m being Blessed. God is Blessing me.” He said “Blessed” like the man who discovered his numbers matched and was declaring that he had won the lottery.

“That man,” he said, pointing to a guy walking away from us. (The same guy I thought he was soliciting when I had pulled back in.) “That man just told me the same exact thing. He said to pull up to the pump, that God had told him to put ten dollars of gas in my car.” He was visibly awestruck.

I think I was too.