My Five-Dollar Miracle
By Jessica Brodie
“Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.” Hebrews 11:19
I didn’t want to spend my last five dollars. But there I was, a single mom four days from payday, and I’d just used the final drop of milk. The cupboards were bare, and I needed to put food on the table for my young kids. To top it off, my gas tank was on empty.
I didn’t know what else to do—the kids had to eat. “It’ll be fine,” I told myself. “I’ll carpool or stay home sick. Everything will work out.” With faith and hope, I gave over everything I had to the grocery clerk, waved a cheerful no-big-deal goodbye, and headed home.
Still, dread pooled. I was choosing to trust we could make it till payday, but deep down, I was terrified.
Then came my small but crystal-clear miracle—I arrived home to find a check in the mailbox made out to me for $35! It felt like a fortune. Apparently, I’d overpaid a bill months prior, and they were reimbursing me.
But I knew the real truth: God had provided.
I wonder if that’s how Abraham felt in the Bible when God told him to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. Abraham didn’t want to do it. He loved Isaac! Still, he trusted the Lord. He may have figured he didn’t have much of a choice. This desperate, horrified father decided to believe that—against all odds—everything would work out. As the book of Hebrews reminds us, “Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death” (Hebrews 11:19).
Sometimes choosing faith feels like the worst, most foolhardy decision possible. But when it comes to God’s way or our own nearsighted human instinct, the wisest option is to set our will aside.
God’s got it all handled, and He has a plan. All we have to do is trust.
Jessica Brodie is an award-winning journalist and a member of the Wholly Loved Ministry team. She’s also an author who currently serves as the editor of the South Carolina United Methodist Advocate, the oldest newspaper in Methodism. She is the author of More Like Jesus: A Devotional Journey (2018) and editor of Stories of Racial Awakening: Narratives on Changed Hearts and Lives of South Carolina United Methodists (2018), both from her newspaper’s Advocate Press. She also writes contemporary women’s fiction, represented by Bob Hostetler of The Steve Laube Agency. Her novel The Memory Garden won the American Christian Fiction Writers’ 2018 Genesis Contest. She has a faith blog at JessicaBrodie.com.
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Originally published Friday, 07 January 2022.
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