You know those game shows where the prize lets contestants dash through stores to fill shopping carts for a few minutes? I thought it would be fun. I wanted to do it. And then one day, I did.
I taught in a good, small Christian school and college in British Columbia, Canada far up the Alaska Highway. We bought the best books we could afford, but always searched for more. One day in town, I ran into the public school superintendent who had visited us and become a friend. He called me over.
“I have surplus books in our depository that I’m giving away free to teachers and schools at noon tomorrow. I want to give you a head start. Come fifteen minsutes early with a pickup, a strong young man, and empty boxes. Get plenty for yourself and your other Christian schools.”
We did for one of the most fun times of my life. The next day, my brawny helper, Ken Gies, and I and entered their facility and dashed past loaded shelves to fill our boxes like clockwork. We especially wanted English, history, science, and math and found them all. Town schools had been reading C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe in Junior High but discarded it now. We scooped it up. 
I found three inch thick English Literature books by Weeks, Lyman, and Hill, copyright 1937 by Charles Scribner’s and Sons, and Ken boxed them. That’s still one of my all-time favorites. It contains readings from Bede’s Ecclesiastical Hitory of the English Nation, 735 A.D., showing God’s hand in history found in few textbooks today. It also includes The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. Public school teachers no longer wanted those, but we did. I wish we had photos, but there wasn’t time.
One account tells how Norse invaders partied and drank all night before their attack. The outnumbered English defenders held a church service, shared communion, and baptized any desiring that. When the English won, the sky rang with Hallelujahs. It’s hard to find those true accounts these days, but they led to some lively English-history classes.
I’ve marveled since at how our needs are met, whether through funds arriving or someone handing us a shopping cart. I smile when I think of that happy book harvest and cherish those close. Receiving them in such a fun way made the gift sweeter.
What about you? What’s an exciting or unusual provision of something you needed?
Have a great end-of-April, start-of-May with endless blessings and occasional surprises,
Delores
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