Jehovah, Hallelujah, the Lord will provide . . .

That often ran through my mind years ago when I was treasurer of a small, poor church, I thought of it again Wednesday in a much different circumstance. (I hope no one thinks I'm being sacrilegious.)

I was planning to attend the Wednesday noon service at Grace Church and then go to the Downtown Coffee Bar to meet my knitting friends. I took a piece of the chocolate zucchini bread Carmen made last week out of the freezer and put it on a small tray. Then I put a new stick of butter on a butter dish, secured the top with pony-tail elastics and added it to the tray along with a few plastic knives. I wrapped all this up in a dishtowel and put it in my knitting bag.

I got to church a little early, and was looking at the yarn someone had donated recently, when my cell phone rang. It was Alyssa asking if I could pick up Lexi and Devon. They were bored and Lexi wanted to go to the shop where she and I had eaten hotdogs one day last year. It's around the corner from where the coffee shop was at the time. I told Alyssa she'd need to give me money, because I only had two dollars.

So I drove to Metropolis and picked up the kids; Alyssa gave me seven dollars. When we got to the shop, we discovered that it has new owners. I told the owner that the kids each wanted a hot dog. He started telling them to each get a bag of chips and one of cookies, and I told him that I only had seven dollars. He said that was OK, that he always takes care of the children. I had already eaten, so I only got a soda. That soda was all he would allow me to pay for! I will definitely need to go back there alone sometime for my lunch.

We spent a couple of hours at the coffee shop. The kids each had their DS (game device) with them, so they kept themselves entertained. My friends all said Carmen can bake for them any time she wants to. About 3:30, I packed up the rest of the bread and butter, and we headed back to Metropolis.

Alyssa was still working. She's doing customer service from home now for the company she's worked for for a year or so. She sits there with a headset and two computer screens and answers phone calls and emails. The kids know to be quiet while she's working. She was also peeling potatoes when we walked in. She had a stew of beef, carrots, onions and tomatoes in the crockpot, and was going to serve  mashed potatoes and biscuits with it. She commented that she didn't have any butter to put in the potatoes or on the biscuits. I said, "Here's butter." She looked over as I pulled the tray with the chocolate zucchini bread and the butter out of my knitting bag. She said, "Oh, that's too funny!" and I thought, "Jehovah, hallelujah, the Lord will provide." Is that too bad of me?