I Know This Seems Silly…

There’s a chance this is going to sound really ridiculous to you, discount but I have to tell you about a little Easter miracle we celebrated yesterday!

Peanut butter is like gold around here.  If you go to a local supermarket, buy cialis you can generally find Peter Pan Peanut Butter, look another brand I’ve never heard of and Jif.  The first two brands sell for about $7.50 for a tiny jar.  Jif, however, sells usually for about $4 for an 18 ounce jar.  You can often find it in creamy and crunchy.  For a while I would keep a couple of extra jars in our cupboards because every now and then a store would run out.

My family LOVES peanut butter.  Last term a team came down and each of them carried in one of those jumbo sized jars for our family.  (We didn’t have the Jif option before.)  We honestly had enough peanut butter to last our whole term – and we had extra to share with other missionary families.

A few weeks ago we had run out of peanut butter.  I went to the store to get more and the shelves were empty of Jif, only the expensive jars remained.  I refuse to spend that much money on peanut butter, so I bought nothing.  Over the next several days when we would pass another supermarket we’d run in and check but it seemed that the peanut butter supplies had run out all over the city.

On Easter morning, Corey and I ran to the store to grab a couple of goodies to make Alex and Maggie Easter baskets (well, bowls…the lack of baskets is another story).  As we strolled the aisles we saw some other goodies that had been out for a while like Betty Crocker Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix and Muffin Mix – little extras that give us a taste of home every now and then.  Seeing the aisles restocked I said, “Corey, look, they’ve gotten in a new shipment – maybe there’s peanut butter!”  I rushed to the peanut butter aisle and, sure enough, on the top shelf there were new jars of Jif Extra Crunchy Peanut Butter!!  The tag underneath gave the price at around $7.50, but when we realized that was the label for Peter Pan, I took off to find the price.  Turns out, the jars of Jif were about $2.50 each – cheaper than they had been before!  We grabbed all nine of the jars sitting on the shelf and headed for the checkout super excited that we would have peanut butter for a while to come.

When the cashier began to ring us up she gave us a funny look.  Peanut butter is not that common around here and the fact that we were buying nine jars probably looked a little strange.  I looked at the monitor that tells you what’s been scanned and, to my great joy, we realized there was another discount on each jar so we were paying $2 each!

Again, I know this sounds ridiculous, but I had the biggest smile on my face in excitement for the kids to get home to show them that we had found peanut butter!  When they got off the plane, one of the first things Maggie said to me was, “You’re not going to believe what I brought home!”  Turns out, at camp they had played a game with peanut butter and they let her bring home the leftover.  So when they got home and saw we had also found some…well, it was an exciting day!!

Psalms 37:4 says “Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”  

You may not understand why peanut butter makes us happy, but God does.  He loves us so much that He knows how many hairs are on each of our heads and He understands how a jar of peanut butter can bring comfort to a homesick heart.  On this Easter, as we celebrated the resurrection, we were reminded just how much God loves us not only by the big things He has done, but in the details as well.

~Tona