The Sunday the money was handed out was our first Sunday at RHCC. 

When I left church that Sunday with the dollar bill tucked in my Bible, I wondered what I was going to do with $1.  I mean it won’t even buy someone a good cup of coffee.  Then I realized what was meant by “prayerfully” deciding how to pay it forward. 

So I began to pray about it and the answer I got was that I should write a letter to my dad.  He is terminally ill with cancer and has not had a relationship with the Lord since he was a teenager, some 50 years ago.  I had been wanting to talk to him about the Lord for a couple of years but I have never been able to find the right words or the right time. I have been putting it off, basically.

So when that was my answer, I thought, no, that can’t be.  I will just pray some more…so I did.  And the same idea kept coming.  I even saw a homeless man pushing a trashcan in Franklin and thought about giving it to him but that letter idea stopped me dead in my tracks. 

Eventually I realized that my prayers about what to do with the dollar had been answered but I had been looking for another answer, not listening to God.  Something I am guilty of too often. 

I finally heeded God’s answer and sat down to write the letter last week.  The words flowed from my pen like magic.  Before I knew it, I had written a 5 page letter.  Instead of just telling my dad about the Lord, what appeared on the paper was encouragement about God’s love but mostly news about the miracle of prayer.  I know where the words that appeared came from—God was making my ink flow.  I had tried so many times to come up with the right words and could not.  This time I could not stop writing! 

In the next couple of weeks, my dad will have some tests that will possibly give him a new dreaded diagnosis and a finite amount of time to live.  He will get the results on October 5. I believe God wanted this letter written, not just to share His love but to remind my dad about the importance of prayer and the miracles it can bring. 

I mailed that letter Wednesday. I do not know if he has received it or not. I am not sure he will acknowledge it to me.  But I am hopeful, since God had such a purpose to have taken me to RHCC that Sunday of all Sundays and to give me the words to say in that letter, that my dad will get on his knees and pray for healing, understanding, peace, more good days than bad, whatever he needs. 

And by the way, because the letter was so lengthy and I wanted it mailed flat, not folded, I spent the whole dollar! 

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