A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE - When God Says "GO"!

 

A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE – When God Says “GO”!

By Mary Lindow

 

This Podcast is going to be focusing on what I would call

“A Miracle on Christmas Eve!”

 

Steve And I Had Just About Been Married About A Year and had been through a complete reorganization of his business due to a partner, having not reported properly on the business financial books. Shortly after we were married, we found this all out and we were saddled with the debt of the business and the business was shuttered and the friendship was shattered.  

 

STEVE REOPENED HIS OWN INTERIOR DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURAL ADVISORY BUSINESS ON A LITERAL SHOESTRING. I was teaching piano and voice lessons and directing a church choir.

 

In October Steve had been asked to totally remodel a local restaurant as well as create matching themed Christmas decor. I had worked in a floral shop for years as a young high school girl and had done many wreaths as well as large swags of things for commercial decorations. I helped Steve begin to build and construct the pieces that went together for all of the items we were going to install. Once it was all prepared and ready, the owner was so grateful and so in love with all the work, she asked us to also do Christmas swags and decor for the Bar and eating area in the bar. This was a few days before Christmas and she had decided she wanted more festive decor in the bar since many parties were to take place for Christmas and up to New Years Day.

So, we gathered materials and created that and installed it.

 

WE WERE NOT ANTICIPATING THAT EXTRA BLESSING FINANCIALLY and we received a $400 check, (which was a lot at that time.) As we began to pray about a Christmas offering, we wanted to do something to honor the Lord at Christmas and help others. A friend of ours whom we had met and had had wonderful prayer meetings with two other schoolteachers in East St. Louis, Missouri, had shared in a prayer meeting about a family in need. At that time, the Bloods and the Crips gangs were very heavily active and there was a tremendous amount of racial tension in East Saint Louis. We were always very careful when driving through the area to not get off on the wrong ramp because often there was a lot of car theft and harm done to people who didn’t know or belong to that area. But, there were times that we would travel down with a group of our friends, both black and white, to a house where a woman by the name of sister Lucy, who had a Doctorate in education, would hold ladies teas and prayer gatherings. We would worship and pray, and intercede and study the word fervently among both black-and-white women who were either highly educated or women who cleaned homes for a living. It didn’t matter! We loved being with each other, and we loved the presence of the Lord. So, when sister Margaret Wren our friend from East St. Louis, who was also a teacher, told us there was a family in desperate need of clothing and food that she knew of and that the mother who was in her early 60s had been holding all of the children and grandchildren together in her home.

 

THIS DEAR WOMAN WAS SCHEDULED TO GO IN FOR OPEN-HEART SURGERY ON CHRISTMAS EVE. Margaret told us there was going to be limited food and of course they weren’t expecting anything for Christmas. Steve and I knew that we were going to end up making what we considered a very significant personal sacrifice instead of doing things we needed to do to broaden our business and also to take care of a few things we needed to handle as well in our home. Yet, the Holy Spirit was persistent. The extra job came in unexpectedly. We knew that $400 was to be used specifically to help this family.

 

WE BEGAN TO TELL OUR SISTER AND BROTHER-IN-LAW WHO LIVED NEXT-DOOR TO US AND A FEW OTHER FAMILIES BEGAN TO GET EXCITED TO HELP. Steve and I went to the local grocery store and filled carts with warm blankets, hams, cereals, fruits, vegetables, different kinds of meat and canned goods, and had the joy of a lifetime like we had won the “Supermarket Sweepstakes!”

 

WE WERE GOING TO GO DELIVER ALL OF THIS ON CHRISTMAS EVE AFTERNOON BEFORE THE DEAR SISTER WAS GOING TO GO AND HAVE HER SURGERY THAT EVENING. Everyone congregated at our little cottage home and we could not believe how many people put together beautiful things for this family! My sister-in-law Judi had put together stacks of beautiful clothing and little outfits for children that her