I read this passage much more literally, based on experience: Get right with God, go in the direction He points you, and let Him worry about the logistics.
And for real, in our lives, it works that way. When we need something that we can't really afford right now, it tends to just turn up. Often in wildly nonsensical ways. Everything from underwear to automobiles, cash to cabins. My husband was in school for two years-- we planned it out very carefully, so that we could bleed our savings in a controlled manner while living on one part-time income. Life, of course, doesn't cooperate and so of course in addition to expenses we planned for, he needed minor surgery (out of pocket), we had a third kid, and the house we were staying in rent-free became uninhabitable due to a rising water table.
Things were very tight. And on an absurdly routine basis, I'd spend a couple of weeks fretting that once again, the kids needed socks. I put off buying them, because the ones I could afford were really poor quality and would have to be discarded in a couple months. I was hoping to turn up some better-quality ones at the kids' consignment, but it just wasn't happening. And then on the way out of church some Russian lady would hand me a bag on the way out and say "My friend is cleaning her closets. Maybe zees fit your boys." And lo, it'd be a whole bag of gently used boys' socks in the correct size. Not the cheap ones, either. And it wasn't like I went around telling people that my kids needed socks. We were saving up their good pairs all week to wear to church, and putting them in sandals the rest of the time.
And it worked like that for all sorts of things. We'd be eating very plain for weeks, just the basic no-frills groceries, getting more monotonous by the day... and then one of the Yia-Yias would randomly send us home with a huge block of good feta, a jar of expensive greek olives, and a bag of homemade koulourakia. For mysterious Greek lady reasons.
At one point, my brother had not finished paying off his current car, when he was forced to buy a larger one. He transferred title to my mom, who took over the remaining payments. But Mom already had a car that she preferred, so she left it at our house, and told us to drive it once a week until we figured out what to do with it. Two weeks later my husband, making a left turn, encountered an oblivious speeding teenager in the oncoming lane. Nobody was hurt but his car was not salvageable. And oh, look, there's this spare car in our yard already...
And that rent-free house that became uninhabitable? Another one (also rent-free) became available to us just in time.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2021-09-17 03:39 pm (UTC)And for real, in our lives, it works that way. When we need something that we can't really afford right now, it tends to just turn up. Often in wildly nonsensical ways. Everything from underwear to automobiles, cash to cabins. My husband was in school for two years-- we planned it out very carefully, so that we could bleed our savings in a controlled manner while living on one part-time income. Life, of course, doesn't cooperate and so of course in addition to expenses we planned for, he needed minor surgery (out of pocket), we had a third kid, and the house we were staying in rent-free became uninhabitable due to a rising water table.
Things were very tight. And on an absurdly routine basis, I'd spend a couple of weeks fretting that once again, the kids needed socks. I put off buying them, because the ones I could afford were really poor quality and would have to be discarded in a couple months. I was hoping to turn up some better-quality ones at the kids' consignment, but it just wasn't happening. And then on the way out of church some Russian lady would hand me a bag on the way out and say "My friend is cleaning her closets. Maybe zees fit your boys." And lo, it'd be a whole bag of gently used boys' socks in the correct size. Not the cheap ones, either. And it wasn't like I went around telling people that my kids needed socks. We were saving up their good pairs all week to wear to church, and putting them in sandals the rest of the time.
And it worked like that for all sorts of things. We'd be eating very plain for weeks, just the basic no-frills groceries, getting more monotonous by the day... and then one of the Yia-Yias would randomly send us home with a huge block of good feta, a jar of expensive greek olives, and a bag of homemade koulourakia. For mysterious Greek lady reasons.
At one point, my brother had not finished paying off his current car, when he was forced to buy a larger one. He transferred title to my mom, who took over the remaining payments. But Mom already had a car that she preferred, so she left it at our house, and told us to drive it once a week until we figured out what to do with it. Two weeks later my husband, making a left turn, encountered an oblivious speeding teenager in the oncoming lane. Nobody was hurt but his car was not salvageable. And oh, look, there's this spare car in our yard already...
And that rent-free house that became uninhabitable? Another one (also rent-free) became available to us just in time.
Lilies of the field.