I sat down to work on my budget today. Not the most inspiring thing to do when you’re unemployed and you’re faced with having to raise $13,000 on top of paying rent and buying things like gear and travel insurance. In the midst of the slow downward spiral into the pit of anxiety, I was reminded of a story my dad told me recently from when I was little.
He overheard me one Sunday while we were at church, sharing my cookies with my lil’ church friends. “Take as many as you’d like, there’s lots more cookies at home!”
I’ve thought about that story pretty often during the last few months of unemployment – being reminded time and time again that there’s ALWAYS room for generosity. Lately I’ve found myself in situations where God has had to pry my fingers from the little I try to hold onto, saying, “Trust me. Trust that I will continue to provide for all your needs tomorrow, just like I did yesterday and today. Share the cookies I’ve given you for today. I’ve got lots more for you at home!”
In these past 3 weeks since being accepted to go on the World Race, God has been showing up in amazing ways, confirming again and again that He’s the one making a way for me to go on this trip. He’s done everything from working out the details so that I could make it to training camp last week, to having my passport come back 3 weeks earlier than I was expecting it to so that I could send out my India visa application this week. Who am I not to trust that He will make a way through the rest of the journey??
“Will a man rob God? Yet you rob me.
“But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’
“In tithes and offerings. 9 You are under a curse-the whole nation of you-because you are robbing me. 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. 11 I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit,” says the LORD Almighty. 12 “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty. (Malachi 3:8-12)
“But you ask, ‘How do we rob you?’
“In tithes and offerings. 9 You are under a curse-the whole nation of you-because you are robbing me. 10 Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. 11 I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit,” says the LORD Almighty. 12 “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty. (Malachi 3:8-12)
