Our Heart of the Father Ministries’ staff Christmas party was going to include a gift exchange. I suggested a Christmas treasure hunt instead. “Everyone prays for simple clues,” I explained. “Then we put all those clues together and go find our treasure—the special person the Holy Spirit has led us to.” Crazy, right? But we’d seen what the Bible calls “a word of knowledge” provide clues before.
My wife, Carla, and I got the job of following the prayer clues. The next morning we set off with a list of words: red, backpack, penny, Plymouth, food, library, and mother with child. “The most logical place to start is the Plymouth library,” Carla said. Plymouth is a town a few minutes away.
“Look!” I said as we pulled into the library parking lot. “There’s a Cub Foods across the street. That’s three clues down already.”
Sure we were on the right track, we marched into the library. “Excuse me,” Carla asked the first woman we saw, “is your name Penny?”
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She shook her head. So did the next woman. And the next. “The librarians probably think we’re stalkers,” I said.
We took a break to get lunch. “Maybe we need to try somewhere else,” I said. But the words had barely left my mouth when the urge came to me to return to the library. Carla went inside. I stayed in the car to finish eating. I looked up in time to see a mother and child heading inside. The woman was carrying a red backpack!
“Is your name Penny?” I asked, hurrying after her.
“No,” she said. I followed her inside. Carla asked her the same question. “My name isn’t Penny,” she repeated. “But I think I have a penny in my backpack. Does that count?”
“Good enough!” I just about shouted.
Carla and I explained our treasure hunt. When we handed her a card with the money we’d collected at the party, she burst into tears.
“My husband and I didn’t know how we were going to afford Christmas gifts for our children,” she said. “Last night we prayed over which bills we’d have to go without paying.”
We’d found our treasure all right, clue by clue.
