53 Minutes To Go

Every once in a while God helps us understand how much He loves us and cares about the smallest details of our lives. I think it is so great when God intervenes in the lives of our children in unmistakable ways.

We've been school shopping, looking for bargains and trying to stretch our dollars where ever we can. Last Saturday Shawn and I went tennis shoe shopping. That is a real challenge with a picky ninth grader. We went from store to store until Shawn finally settled on a pair of shoes. He was trying to bargain shop, but his desire for cool shoes kept taking him back to the Air Jordan display. He picked a pair of 16.5s. (I didn't realize that there were so many models of Air Jordans, some costing up to $149 on sale, most in the $75 to $89 range) The salesman went to the back room and came back with the news that they didn't have any of that type in stock. The only pair were the display models and they were size 11. We were looking for 9.5s. We asked a manager when another shipment might come in. She looked up the model number and informed us that this shoe would not be available anymore. She suggested going to Nike.com and see if we could order a pair. On the way home from the mall, we stopped at a couple more stores. No luck.

When we got home we went from site to site, no one had the shoes in his size. We finally found a site with a pair in his size, $89.95 plus shipping. We put the pair in our online shopping basket and then I had a thought, let's check Ebay. We opened another browser window, went to Ebay.com and did a search on Air Jordan 16.5 tennis shoes. The very first pair of shoes that came up were the exact color and model that Shawn was looking for. A mother had bought the pair for her son and they were the wrong size. They were still in the box, brand new. We scanned down the description looking for a size, 9.5. Unbelievable... and then we saw there were no bids and the auction was ending in 53 minutes. We quickly entered our bid for the starting bid price of $60, a real bargain. Then we realized another blessing, free shipping. We checked the site several times in the next hour and then finally got the email, "you have won the auction". A brand new pair of Air Jordan tennis shoes for a bargain price.

Does God care about us? You bet. Does He delight in revealing Himself in such creative ways? Absolutely. Did Shawn see God's blessing in his life on Saturday? It was unmistakable. Now, where is that postman?