Friends Who Bless

 These are our pots and pans...

 They were purchased in 1975 as a wedding gift...FOR MY PARENTS.  As newly weds, Greg and I were happy to inherit many hand-me-downs.  There was nothing wrong with these pots and pans and we did not have the money to get a new set, so we took them from my parents and have been using them ever since. 

 Greg sometimes makes pasta in this pot and it sticks to the bottom and burns.  He always blamed the pot, but the truth is, it happened to me sometimes too.  The pot was thin on the bottom and if the heat was too high, you could easily have a big messy problem.

 I can't remember where this pan came from.  It might be from my family too, but it's very scratched and has no "non stick" to it, so you need about a half can of PAM to get your eggs out of it.

This IKEA beauty is from the college years and probably cost $5 10 years ago. It's perfectly clean...those are scratches you're looking at.  It too is paper thin and fairly useless.

I'm not materialistic (in too many ways), so for us, these have done the job well enough and we had not given much thought to replacing any of them any time soon.  But this weekend we had some dear friends over and they aparently thought differently.  We love to have people over and cook for them and serve them.  So we had two pots going with corn on the cob, a pot of mashed potatos, and some gravy simmering.  So needless to say they were all dirty.  My gracious friend was kind enough to do ALL our dishes after the meal while her husband was sharing some stories with us of their life lately.  Before I knew it, she had washed and put all my pots away.

Two days later, before they left town again, I got a text that a gift was sitting on our steps and I opened the door to find this...

 WHAT?!! A beautiful 10 piece cook set BRAND NEW!!!!!  I could not believe their generosity.  The card said that while poking around the kitchen, God had laid it on their hearts to gift us with this set.  After a brief moment of embarrassment from the obviously old state of my cookware, I recovered and was flooded with feelings of gratitude and blessing.  Friends so kind, so observant, and so in tune to the Holy Spirit that God knew my needs better than I did and they were willing to obey him and bless us. 

 I opened them up and was amazed how beautiful they are.  Lids that fit! Handles that won't burn your hand! Glass lids you can SEE what you're cooking!  It was bliss. 

So tonight I made Liam some pasta.  It cooked like a dream. And I was reminded of what it means to be not just a friend, but a friend who listens to the Lord and is quick to obey and bless others.  I know I'm not always great at that.  But I'm sure thankful for this sweet sweet reminder!