Why This Medicine?

A large truck drove into the hospital compound and delivered over four tons of medical supplies for Dr. Helen Roseveare, a missionary in the Congo. She and her helpers sorted and stacked  the bottles on to shelves but were a little disappointed that the most needed drugs were missing. Instead there were two cartons, of 24 pint-sized bottles for treating a rare type of food-poisoning. They relegated them to the back of the top shelf since such food poisoning was virtually unknown to their people.

That week, the villagers ran short of food during a wedding feast and gathered, cooked and distributed wild yams to the guests. Within six hours, the whole village was gravely ill with food poisoning. Over twenty people died before they could help them. Of those who managed to reach the hospital, 48 of the most severely ill were treated with the medicine Dr. Roseveare gratefully retrieved from the back of the top shelf in the pharmacy. Those 48 lived.

Dr. Roseveare had no doubt that most of those 48 would have died without that particular medical aid which she had never owned before and never received again. It had arrived the very week that the need arose, and she never learned who sent it.

God, Your ways are truly mysterious and awesome.

"And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:19).