Last weekend I held my first in-person, non-virtual, face-to-face fundraiser: a spaghetti dinner in my parents’ hometown. And God blew me away.
I went in to my fundraiser with low expectations. I mean, I hadn’t even lived in this town in over 5 years, which is plenty of time for people to forget about you. But I also had the mindset that “every little bit helps”, which it does.
I was first surprised to see how eager the women in the church were to help out. They gathered the things I would need for my spaghetti dinner: spaghetti noodles, homemade sauce, French garlic bread, a green salad, and fresh-brewed tea. When I arrived at the church, there were three HUGE crockpots of spaghetti sauce that one of the ladies had made; much more than I thought we needed, to be honest.
The ladies were late to the church service and left early to do final preparations before everyone came. They came early before church to get everything set, and left well after the dinner had ended, making sure every pot and pan were scrubbed clean.
I was able to help serve food to people, and then I talked with several people I had not seen in years about my mission trip opportunity. The whole dinner was really an experience I never imagined it being. People gave much more than the $4 we recommended per plate, and even people I didn’t even know made significant donations!
In the end, we had enough food left over to have another fundraiser meal – and that’s exactly what the ladies started planning! Not only did they give their all for this spaghetti dinner, they started talking about ways they could do another one and help me out even more!
In this fundraiser dinner, I learned that God goes way beyond my expectations when I expect Him not to (redundant, I know… bear with me). I realized that I limit God. I tell Him when He should work big things and when He can work small things. I tell Him when to stop and when He should give me more.
But that’s not who God is. He does big things out of the seemingly small things, and He does small things out of the seemingly big things!
I am a goal-maker by nature, so it’s tempting to have these expectations of what I think God should do, when I need to just focus on what He can do. And what He can do will always far outweigh my expectations of what He should do.
