Russell A. Cardwell Online

Ordinarily I don’t write down these kinds of things, but this was a God-thing too blatant to miss. Usually God does his work behind the scenes in ways that are subtle and often go unnoticed, or can easily be explained away. About a year-and-a-half ago, I made a purchase on one of those “no payments, no interest for 18 months� plans. I’ve done this before; you make payments as you go along and be sure you’re finished before the interest comes due. But this time, there was always some other need that took priority, and I kept putting the payments off.

Last Wednesday, as I was doing my finances, I noticed that my 128 months was over on March 25th. It had to be payed in full or I would have to pay the deferred interest (at 20.9%)! I didn’t have that much extra cash laying around so I transferred some money from savings and paid the bill in full. I’d rather lose the piddly bit of interest from the savings than pay the 20%.

Sunday, as I was going through the unopened mail from earlier in the week, I opened a letter from my mortgage company. I was expecting it to be next month’s bill. Instead, it was a review of my escrow account. It seems that in the past year, I had overpaid my taxes, and rather than lower my payment to let the account catch up, they sent me a check to refund the surplus.

Can anyone guess how much the check was for? If you said the exact amount of the bill I just paid, you would be wrong. It was for $0.42 more. I think that just covers the cost of a stamp, a check, and an envelope.

That check, by the way, had arrived on Tuesday, the day before I made the payment. Had I opened it right away, I would have known God was looking out for me all along.

• Toothache and Nails