Share Your Bread

I arrived at church for a class of teachers one morning and found a young woman sitting on a bench crying. I approached and asked how I could help her, and she told me her story. She was a single mother with a daughter who was studying at the local Adventist school. Due to financial difficulties, she would be forced to put her daughter in a public school. Her young daughter could not accept the decision and just kept crying.

Without having a way to solve the problem herself, she went to the church hoping to find help. At the time, I was married and had no children, so I offered to help her by paying the school tuition so that her daughter could continue studying at the Adventist school. The tears turned to joy, and she was grateful.

Five years after being married, I had a daughter, and fifteen years later I had twin sons. When my twins were three years old, my husband passed away, leaving me in a difficult financial situation. When they were ten years old, I had to put them in a bigger, more expensive school. In the middle of the school year, I saw that I would not be able to afford the tuition and would need to move them to a public school.

This situation made me very sad because the quality of teaching would be much lower than they had in their school. I didn’t tell anyone about the situation, but at night I cried out to God in prayer. After a tearful night of prayer, my nephew (whom I had raised) called and said that he had received a promotion at work and wanted to begin paying the school tuition for my children beginning that month.

I remembered God’s promise in Isaiah 58:9, “Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am” (KJV).

God’s promises are fulfilled without advance or delay and at the exact time we need it most. God is always faithful.

Isabel Cristina de Almeida