plenty

God provides.

Sometimes when I hear that, I think, “Yes, he provides us the ability to work and to get things done and earn a living.” I think that because I like to think I’m self-sufficient, and I wish other people would be too.

But God doesn’t teach self-sufficiency, he teaches interdependence. Often he provides by giving us each other. And sometimes he provides things that would be impossible for us to attain.

For example, in Leviticus 25 God lays down the laws of the sabbath year and the year of Jubilee. In answer to the obvious question of where the food would come from if the land was rested for two years, he promised this, in verses 21 and 22 “I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years. While you plant during the eighth year, you will eat from the old crop and will continue to eat from it until the harvest of the ninth year comes in.”

Farmers I know do everything they can each year to ensure a good crop, but sometimes crops still fail. God promised, and provided, bumper crops as needed.

This reminds me of two things. First, God does provide. He can do anything he wants to, and he often wants to bless me. It’s my own worldly lenses that make those blessings look like luck or the result of my own good character.

Second, I shouldn’t ever turn down an assignment from God because it looks like I’m short of skills or resources. Like the three-year crop at Jubilee, God already knows exactly what it will take to get me through, and he has a plan for that.

Thanks be to God for his goodness to me.