Orange Manna

By Sarah Sullivan

It was just before Christmas in 1983 and my friend Katie and I were discussing our wishes for juice (a very rare commodity in the ministry at the time). "Man, I'd give anything to have some juice! Can you imagine how great a tall glass of orange juice would be?" Katie then suggested asking God to get us some. To me, the idea that God would be concerned enough to provide us with something this simple was crazy. But on the other hand, I figured that praying couldn't hurt. So, though only 1 percent of me believed it would happen, our simple, insignificant prayer was sent up, "God, please, if possible, can you bring us some orange juice?"

A few days later I answered the phone in our hall. It was a man looking for the supervisor of our kitchen. When I asked if I could take a message, he said, "I have this donation of orange juice I want to bring over to the house." I had barely hung up the phone before I started screaming for Katie, "God has brought us orange juice!"

We had hoped the donation would be enough to provide juice for everyone at breakfast. But when they brought it over it was like manna from heaven! Delivered to our back door were six huge industrial-size drums, filled with orange juice concentrate. We rolled one of the drums into the walk-in and stored the rest outside. Thank goodness it was the dead of winter. The first week we had the donation we drank orange juice by the gallon. But as the resulting canker sores arrived, we realized we definitely had to learn how to abound in the juice! Throughout most of the winter we had juice, and then just as the season was beginning to change, we used up the last drum.

As a young Christian the whole event did more for me than meet my desire for orange juice. I had learned that nothing is too small to trouble God with. He is our Father, and loves us so much that no request we have is insignificant to Him.

First published in Cornerstone (ISSN 0275-2743), Vol. 29, Issue 118 (2000), p. 11
© 2000 Cornerstone Communications, Inc.
Electronic version may contain minor changes and corrections from printed version.