Devotion for the Week of October 15, 2007

In 1903 a woman by the name of Annie Johnson lived in a small town in Arkansas. Her husband had left her to raise her two young children in the one room house they lived in. She had very little money and knew that there was no way she would be hired at the town’s two major sources of employment an cotton gin and a lumber yard. Being a tall and large woman she was unable to get work as a “domestic” plus she would have to leave her children with someone else most of the day. She also trusted God to give her the courage to find a way and follow it.

Now Annie had a talent, she could cook. She would never admit to being a great cook and se to say that she was only “mixing groceries well enough to scare hunger away from starving a man.”
She decided to use her talents and make herself a new path.

Early one morning Annie went outside the cotton gin with meat pies she had made the night before. Her plan was to heat them up so the aroma would entice the workers to buy them. One day she would serve the hot at the cotton gin for a nickel a piece and then go to the Lumber yard and serve them cold for three cents each. The next day she would reverse the order. At first her idea didn't catch on because most of the workers packed their own lunch, but gradually more and more of the workers bought her pies.

For the next few years, Annie never disappointed her customers. The workers came to depend on her. Before too long her simple mobile stall became a store carrying meat and cheese, built an equal distance between the cotton gin and the lumber yard where the customers came to her.

Annie had stepped from the road which seemed to have been chosen for her and cut herself a brand new path. That takes courage. That takes trust in God. What new path is God calling you to cut?

Each one helps the other, saying to one another, "Take courage!"
Isaiah 41:6