Root Beer Floats and Answered Prayers

10-22-11

When I was at Red Robin yesterday, I totally made the waitress' day. The hostess had seated us, and the waitress (her name is Cindy) came up to the hostess and said, "I have to sell only one more and then I win!" in this excited tone of anticipation.

Curious, I said, "What do you have to sell one more of?"

"A root beer float!" Cindy said. I thought I could hear the tone of hope in her voice.

"Well, how much are they?" I asked.

Cindy grabbed my menu and looked. "Three dollars," she said.

"I'll have one," I said. I mean, it was technically my money I was spending, but I was being paid back and it was through my mom's card and so it felt like free money, oxymoron as that is.

"Really?"

"Yes, really. I want a root beer float."

Cindy practically leaped from my table to the back to get the said root beer float. Another lady (maybe a manager) came out and talked to me and said that Cindy was "ecstatic" about winning. And all she got was points to put into a drawing toward a trip to Orlando, Florida.

I suppose I should have written about this yesterday, but it slipped my mind when I was recounting my day in the previous post. I suppose it was a pretty major thing to Cindy, but I just felt like doing it. This morning I overslept and so I streamed Adoration and watched Pastor Dave's sermon, wherein he talked about how we should live our lives with the idea that sometimes God uses us to answer other people's prayers.

It reminded me of Ebeye. My first Sabbath there, Pastor Tommy said that the church had been praying and praying for teachers, and the thought struck me: We were those teachers that God had sent in answer to their prayer for teachers, and that just totally floored me.

So I wonder, Was I an answer to prayer yesterday? I certainly made the lady very happy. I mean, I'll probably never know if Cindy wins that trip to Orlando, but I am happy that I made her so very happy by ordering a root beer float. But I truly hope that we do live our lives in such a way that we are enabled to be answers to other people's prayers.

More later.