Merchant's Ship and Wal-Mart Semis

"Who can find a virtuous and capable wife?
She is worth more than precious rubies.
She is like a merchant's ship; she brings her food from afar."
Proverbs 31:10, 14
~
"Honor God with everything you own; give him the first and the best.
Your barns will burst, your wine vats will brim over." Proverbs 3:9-10

Do you ever feel like the Proverbs 31 model woman is just a little unattainable for you? I do - often! I mean, this woman seems to have more than 24 hours in a day, and it is easy for me to compare myself to her and find myself lacking. But today I had a little personal victory realized that, at least for today, I lived a little bit of Proverbs 31.

Verse 14 describes a woman who provides food for her family from "afar." As a young home school girl, one of my assignments was to illustrate the Proverbs 31 woman. The picture I drew for verse 14 was a large box of Cheerios aboard a ship. Little did I know that 15 years later I would realize how close to the truth that drawing is!

Today I went price match shopping at my Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market. I nearly always prefer to go to Kroger, Albertson's orTom Thumb, but this week's sales were SO good at all three stores, and none of my coupons were eligible to be doubled grocery stores will triple all coupons up to $0.39 and double coupons up to $0.50 - Wal-Mart accepts coupons at face value.) and I wanted to take advantage of "one stop shopping." After price matching and using coupons, I bought the following items for about $16.00.

11 tubes of Speed Stick deodorant
8 bottles of Advil
2 boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios
2 boxes of Strawberry Yogurt Cheerios
2 boxes of Raisin Bran
4 boxes of Eggo whole wheat waffles
8 boxes of Pop Tarts


I estimate the original Wal-Mart price for these items to be about $125.00 - that's a savings of about 88%. The Kellogg items are also part of a mail-in rebate that is available, so after I receive the rebate check I will have spent a total of $6.00 for all of those products!

In this modern day in which we live, Cheerios and Advil may not come to us via merchant ships. Most of the items above are made in the good old US of A - and arrive3d in Fort Worth via a Wal-Mart semi...but it did still come from "afar."