Our Awesome God, By The Numbers

For the past few weeks, my women's Bible study group at church has been planning a spring ministry event. We hatched the idea one evening over coffees. It just seemed that so many women felt disconnected from each other and discouraged. We wanted an event that would lift them up and inspire them.

"A Cup of Encouragement: Women Inspiring Women" was born on that night. One of the ladies knew a speaker, we came up with a coffee theme, and the rest sort of planned itself. Someone mentioned those cute Gerbera daisy flower pens...wouldn't it be cute if we stuck them in glass vases filled with coffee beans?

I used my spiritual gift of shopping ( ha ha!) and bought the flowers, pens, and notepads. We really had no idea how many women would attend. After all, we're a new church plant with a small but growing congregation.

I bought the flower bushes at Michael's...eight flowers to a bush, and I bought three each of three colors, pink, yellow, and orange, to match our coffee cups.

I went to the office supply store. Pens were sold in a box of 36. I bought two. Notepads were sold in packages of twelve. I bought six. And when I got it all home, I realized that everything totalled seventy-two. 72 pens, 72 flowers, 72 notepads. At our planning meeting, I jokingly told the women "Well, it seems I bought 72 of everything, so God's going to have to send us 72 women to attend."

Yesterday, I got the email from Becky, our church secretary. She was amazed to report that we officially had 72 women attending on Saturday. She added that she now thinks I have a direct line with God. ha ha!

Isn't our God awesome? We're so thrilled! We've been praying without ceasing that God would give our speaker the right words, and that they would fall fresh on every woman attending that day. And more than anything, we've been praying to our Father that this event would not be about us, but about bringing glory to Him.



We chose the bible passage from Psalm 23: 5 "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows."




I've been putting together seventy-two notepad holders for the event. I used the stamp set "Espressoly For You" from Stampin' Up to decorate each folder in our coffee theme. I think that these bright and cheery colors will be a welcome sight for the first day of spring. I will take photos of the event tomorrow. In the meantime, I have to make a loaf of lemon bread and an apple cashew salad, and I have to drop everything off at church this afternoon before I go in to work. Yikes! I'm not sure if there are enough hours in my day!

I hope your weekend is filled with inspiration and encouragement, too!