A gift from a visitor

I've been making my own Christmas cards the last couple of years. Thanks to supplies and a few ideas from Carina of Calm Crafting and exchanging stamps with friends, I've come up with designs that express my unique creations.

I use colourful paper from Japan which came in my luggage when we returned to Hamilton. We had been missionaries there for 25 years and I've always loved Japanese craft paper.

So last week as I was cutting and pasting cards from this paper, my mind drifted back to a one particular Christmas from our early days in Osaka.

We were expecting a senior, well known Australian missionary to visit us. We hardly had any money to buy supplies to offer him basic hospitality. It was close to Christmas and also our birthdays as they all happened within a few weeks of each other. What a dilemma. But not an unusual one for us. We prayed for provisions on a daily basis, so once again we lifted up our need to the Lord to answer.

Lionel was duly picked up from the station and as I slid open the door of our little old Japanese-styled house to greet him, I noticed he was carrying a beautifully wrapped box. Inside were 3 roll cakes. A jam roll, a chocolate roll and a cream roll. One for each birthday.

We may not have had an abundance of bread for toast the next morning but we had cake and little oranges and green tea and thankful hearts to the Lord Jesus as we enjoyed our afternoon tea.

This was our first time to meet Lionel and he had no idea it was our birthdays or of our need for encouragement. What a sumptuous answer to prayer, and it showed us once again that the Lord could be depended upon.

Yesterday I glued on another star and another candle cut from Japanese paper getting ready for this Christmas and remembering a long ago Christmas in a far land. Time and place are no barriers to the Lord of miracles at anytime of the year, in any country and in any life.

"...... and opening their treasures they presented to Him gifts of
gold ....." Matt 2:11

Edith