We were blessed to have three guests in our home last week visiting our area with their college a cappella group. It was our first time hosting strangers overnight, so we were very excited. Due to my excitement, or perhaps something else, I made two silly mistakes while preparing dinner for us and our guests: 1) I forgot to double the soup recipe that I made, so it was going to serve 4 large bowls or 6 small bowls at most, 2) I made cornbread and forgot to put in the 2 cups of cornmeal. I’m not sure how these things happened as I’m typically a pretty good cook and pretty level headed person. In fact, with the cornbread, I had a moment before baking it that I thought, “Something is wrong; it’s not typically this watery and the smell is wrong.” I looked over the recipe again to see what I was missing, but somehow my eyes didn’t focus on ‘cornmeal’ and I baked it anyway, assuming I’d done everything correctly.
I realized both my mistakes five minutes before we had to leave for the concert. By the time we got home with our college students it was going to be 9 pm–too late to remake anything, and all of our guests had dietary needs (as do we), so this wasn’t something that could be solved with ordering pizza. Instead, I prayed over the food–and the whole house–and trusted that the Lord would do something. The logical side of me was thinking, “If everyone eats half a bowl of soup and lots of salad…Maybe it will work.”
But two amazing things happened. First, the soup was multiplied. I watched as each of the guests served themselves a full bowl, worrying there would not be enough, then one for my husband and a half bowl for our son. I assumed I’d just be eating salad, but I reached the ladle and pulled it up to see that there was enough for me after all! Later in the meal, everyone took seconds–including me: that makes 10.5 bowls. And when we’d all eaten enough, we had so much left it wouldn’t fit in our storage containers and had to be stored in a pitcher instead! The next day I counted 3 full bowls of leftovers. God multiplied my soup from 4ish bowls to 13.5 bowls!!! This is more than triple! I’ve made this same soup many times for our family and sometimes my husband and I have eaten it all in one sitting. This was truly a miracle!
Second, the Lord did a miracle with my cornbread. It didn’t taste like corn–not even remotely. But it was MUCH BETTER than normal! It also had a very bread-like consistency despite being made almost entirely of liquid. I had warned the guests of my mistake beforehand: that the bread may be terrible and they were free to raid the refrigerator afterward. But it was not necessary, Jesus blessed us greatly, despite my lack of faith.
He is SO good!
