25
“From Someone Who Cares”
An empty pantry and a heartfelt prayer taught Kelly Knauss a lesson in miracles.
In the spring of 1997, Kelly Knauss stood in the kitchen of the house he shared with two other college students in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He had the place to himself this morning, which wasn’t unusual, since his roommates were often away for days at a time.
He reached into the cupboard and took down a dinner plate and a drinking glass. He set them on the table in front of the chair where he usually sat to eat. From a drawer, he took a single setting of silverware—knife, fork, and spoon—and arranged them neatly on a napkin beside the plate. All set.
Except for one thing. He had no food and no money. His stomach growled to punctuate the real possibility that he might not eat at all that day.
Just twenty-one at the time, Kelly had never experienced anything like this before. In fact, only a year earlier it looked as if he might never have to think about money again.
He’d become a believer when he was fourteen and then got serious about his faith at seventeen. He felt drawn to a life of full-time ministry and enrolled in a prominent Chicago Bible college. But after flunking out his first year, and suffering through a painful breakup with the girl he thought he’d marry, he wasn’t so sure about his future in the church.
“I was disappointed by how things were turning out,” he recalled. “I wandered away from God and questioned everything I felt certain of before.”
Disheartened, he flew home to Chattanooga—and promptly landed in the lap of luxury. He went to work for the owners of a pest control business and began dating their daughter. They welcomed him as if he were already family and began grooming him to move up the company ladder quickly. The girl’s father showered him with unexpected “pocket money” and expensive gifts.
“My birthday present that year was a trip to the Bahamas,” he said. “Suddenly I had money to throw around, and I started thinking, I can chase this dream. I can make this my life. But deep down I knew it wasn’t right. Even though the money was alluring, I was already feeling discontent with that lifestyle.”
Eventually Kelly’s dissatisfaction led to a moment of decision. One day he found himself crawling through sewage under a house with leaking pipes. He was there to assess termite damage, which almost certainly was not as bad as he would have to make it sound to sell the owner a treatment package. Suddenly, in that cramped, dank crawl space, he saw himself clearly following in the footsteps of the prodigal son—running from God and from the life he was meant to lead. Not long after, he broke up with the girl and said good-bye to her family. He took a month-long road trip to Colorado, trying to gain clarity and get back on track. Once home, he enrolled part time at a local college.
At first, money still was not a problem. He liked to buy and sell sports cars, and he worked on commission for a friend who owned a nearby lot. He was a natural salesman and never lacked for anything.
“Being a single guy in my early twenties, I tried to live extravagantly, owning three nice sports cars and a motorcycle,” he said. “My friends described me as free-spirited, independent, and wealthy for my age. I certainly wanted to appear that way.”
About that time, a friend asked Kelly to consider joining a youth ministry called Student Venture, run by Campus Crusade for Christ. While the idea of working with teens intrigued him, there was a major problem with the plan: As a Campus Crusade member, he’d have to raise his own support. The thought of being completely dependent on the generosity of donors held little appeal for him. His friend persisted, though, and Kelly promised to at least pray about it.
Then things began to change.
“God’s answer when I prayed was always the same—that I should trust in him to provide instead of putting trust in myself or a steady paycheck. Yet at the same time, I felt that he pulled the rug out from under my feet.”
Now the cars Kelly bought, hoping to turn them around for quick profit, wouldn’t sell. His healthy income quickly looked anemic. Desperate, he got a job cleaning a church, just two doors down from his house, but had to wait nearly a month for work to begin. In other words, he was broke. Really broke.
Kelly looked at the place setting he’d just laid out. He knew there was no food in the house and no money in his wallet. But he’d once heard the story of a Prussian minister named George Müller who cared for many thousands of orphans in Bristol, England, in the mid-nineteenth century. Müller never asked for financial assistance and never went into debt. Yet the needs of his five orphanages were always met, often at precisely the critical moment.
One morning the kitchen staff informed Müller there was nothing for the children to eat for breakfast that day. He instructed them to set the tables as usual. When the children sat down, he gave thanks for the food as he always did. Just then there was a knock at the door: A neighborhood baker had arrived with enough bread to feed everyone, followed by a milkman whose loaded cart had broken down just in front of the orphanage. God had provided at the very moment Müller and his hungry orphans needed him to.
“I’m no George Müller,” Kelly said. “But I asked God to provide my dinner that night, in spite of the fact that I was full of doubt. What if I ask and God doesn’t answer? What if his answer is no? What if I didn’t pray hard enough? But I also had to see what would happen if God said yes.”
He admits it wouldn’t have been the first time God answered a similar prayer. Only recently he’d asked for side work he could do while waiting for his new job to start. A man who lived nearby knocked within minutes and said, “Do you happen to know of anyone looking for side work? I need help with a bunch of odd jobs.” That had led to a week’s wages.
But asking for food to appear out of thin air seemed different somehow.
Kelly left the house and walked to the church where he’d soon be working full time. That day he’d agreed to help the regular maintenance man, Roger, with a project or two. Several hours later, the work was done and he was ready to head home. Determined to follow Müller’s example, he’d said nothing of his need.
Roger stopped him before he could leave and said, “Hey, Kelly, do you want any of the food in the benevolence pantry?” He explained that much of it had reached its expiration date and would have to be thrown out if no one used it.
“Of course, I was thinking of the empty dishes I’d set out on my table at home, so I told him I could use a box of cereal. He gave me one, but then just kept pulling things out of the closet. By the time he was done, I had a box of dried and canned goods that must have weighed eighty pounds. I could barely carry it. And I was amazed what God had just done.”
Afraid the bottom would fall out before he could get it home, Kelly set it on the sidewalk outside and went to get his car. Then, when he arrived back at his front door, he was astonished to find three full grocery bags leaning against it with a note attached: “From someone who cares.”
Stunned, he retrieved the box and carried it inside. When he went to collect the bags, a car pulled into the driveway. Trish, a woman from the church, leaned out the window. “I was at the store and God put it in my heart to bring you some food,” she called. Then she got out and handed him three grocery bags full of frozen goods.
She drove away and he went inside, barely able to contain his excitement and gratitude. God had answered, and then some! He would eat tonight; more than that, he felt revived in his faith, knowing his needs would be met.
“I felt like God was right there in the room with me,” he said. “I laid out the groceries on the counter, but soon it was completely full. So I put food on the table, but then that filled up also. I had to put the rest on the kitchen floor.”
It was enough food for eight weeks. And it was sufficient evidence of God’s provision to convince Kelly to call his friend and take the position with Student Venture.
“God can provide if we trust him,” said Kelly, who now serves as a pastor in Wisconsin. “Since then, when things seem difficult, I just remember the time I asked God for one meal and he fed me for two months.”