Crooked blue glasses frame Gary’s face as he recounts his afternoon. His glasses are broken and sag slightly on the rim of his nose. He has a gullible charm and guys jovially tease him about everything from his marine short haircut to his Spongebob-like voice. He runs the kitchen. This afternoon, after cooking several pounds of ground beef and adding Sloppy Joe mix, Gary realizes there are no rolls. There haven’t been rolls delivered in two weeks. The kitchen shelves are stuffed, overflowing with prepackaged bags of white bread. The sauce would soak right through thin slices of Wonder bread.
“Oh Lord, we could really use some rolls,” he prays.
Sometime around three o’clock an insignificant, small white station wagon turns onto the driveway. Radiant with gleaming ear-to-ear grins, a slight elderly couple opens the car door. The man, somewhere in his mid-eighties, clears his throat, “We have some donations. Is there anyone from the kitchen staff here?” He continues, “We were supposed to deliver food to a Christian boys home in the area, but they were closed today.”
Loaded like a circus clown car, boxes of food threaten to rupture the seams of the small car. Every last crevice is covered, from foot wells to the rearview mirror. I don’t know how they crammed it all in there. Out of this small station wagon bursts boxes of canned goods, chocolate cookies, apple fritters, coffee cakes, and roughly thirty bags of rolls.
Gary admitted he woke up this morning feeling so alone, abandoned. He misses his wife, and small children. It’s been so long since he’s been able to be a father. Lonely, he confessed that he didn’t feel God was there, at least not today. Yet, Gary prayed for rolls and God delivered.
Stomach aching, I rest on my bed munching an apple fritter, still trying to process God alongside two Sloppy Joes. Sipping deep dark coffee, tonight I’m speechless and utterly amazed. Enthralled by a God that cares for our smallest, seemingly most insignificant needs and how he pours out His love abundantly to those who ask. Drool drips, jaw on the floor, my world has been blown up by bread and a God who provides well beyond what we deem possible. How cool is that?
