The other day, I started a post off with a fictitious account of a man named Stuart. It was meant as a playful anecdote containing a thinly veiled moral lesson: Give to charity or end up as a grease smear on the highway.

Well, within 24 hours of my posting that story, it became apparent that I was going to need to write an epilogue. So, here it is:

Once upon a time, a time just a little bit after that other story took place (let’s say 10 minutes after the paramedics finished scraping Stuart off the highway with a spatula), there was a DIFFERENT man. This man was NOT Stuart. He was an entirely separate character. To help you keep the two distinct in your mind, we will call this other man “Schmuart.”

As Schmuart was walking down the street, he noticed that someone had spilled what appeared to be a large cup of fancy coffee all over the sidewalk. Next to the spill, a kind-hearted looking man was trying to wipe coffee off of a few of the brochures on his little table. “Hmmm…” thought Schmuart. “It looks as though a valuable lesson was just learned here.” (This would all make a lot more sense if you would go back and read the other post first.)

Schmuart stooped to pick up a stray pamphlet from off the ground (because that is just the kind of person Schmuart is), and as he handed it back to the kind-hearted man, he said, “I couldn’t help but notice that you seem to be engaged in helping less-fortunate people. Is this the type of work that I could be a part of by giving money towards?”

“Why, yes it is!” answered the kind-hearted man.

“What if I gave you all the money in my wallet?” asked Schmuart.

“That would be amazing!” replied the kind-hearted man.

“What if I also gave you the keys to my car?” asked Schmuart.

“I don’t know what to say,” answered the kind-hearted man. “That’s definitely more than I was expecting.”

“What if I also give you the clothes I’m wearing?” pursued Schmuart.

“Your generosity is beginning to make me uncomfortable,” answered the kind-hearted man. “Please stop.”

“Are you sure?” Asked Schmuart. “Because I have children I could sell if…”

“What?!” shouted the kind-hearted man.

“I was just joking.” replied Schmuart.

And with that, he turned and walked down the street in his underpants, whistling a happy tune, leaving the kind-hearted man staring dumbly after him, completely astounded at what had just transpired.

The end.

Assuming you were able to keep up with my complicated, yet masterful, plot development, and stay abreast of the elegant tableau of witty repartee, you may have noticed a subtle difference between the overall feel of this story and the last one. A sort of “je ne sais quoi,” if you will.

Namely, there were significantly less incidents of vehicular manslaughter. But the MAIN take-away, hopefully, was that Schmuart (unlike Stuart) engaged with the need he saw and reacted in a manner that is above and beyond what is at all normal.

That brings me to the little gold nugget of truth behind this tale: Less than 1 day after making our financial need public, I received an email from a single individual informing me that he had already sent in the FULL AMOUNT we were trying to raise.

Let me go over those details again: So that we could purchase new batteries for our bush house’s solar system, ONE person, in ONE day, gave ONE gift of $6,500!!*

To be clear, when I said my little prayer to God this morning, asking if He would please provide for this specific need of ours, this was not at all what I was expecting. Actually, when I look at what God did through this individual, and then think back to what I was thinking when I put the job in His hands, it’s fairly embarrassing.

When I had asked for God for His divine intervention, I was pretty much thinking that it would be great if He could facilitate a couple of bake sales for me. And God looked at my piddly little dust-bunny lump of faith and was like, “Hey, chuckles, I own the cattle on a thousand hills, remember? I am not limited by your snickerdoodle-sized imagination.”

[*BOOM!*] Batteries. (*mic drop*)

So, that was cool.

Please join our family in praising the Lord! We are truly humbled by the generosity we’ve witnessed on the part of God, in stirring this individual’s heart, and on the part of this individual, in being willing to take such a bold, sacrificial, and unorthodox step. It has been awe-inspiring to behold.

Please consider this the public announcement that I said I would make when we reached our financial goal. And, yes, it still feels surreal to be writing it only one day after announcing our goal to begin with…

*I am feeling strongly at this moment that there should be such a thing as capital numbers, so that I could more accurately express the magnanimity of that figure.