God-Reality, God-Initiative and God-Provisions

I didn’t hear the siren. To be hon­est, I was doz­ing in front of the tele­vi­sion because I had a very long day. So I grabbed a light din­ner and set­tled in for the evening.

But then my hus­band came into the room and said, “Doesn’t look good across the street.”

He heard the siren and then noticed the red lights danc­ing in the night air, vis­i­ble behind the cur­tains we had closed ear­lier when the sun went down.

I dragged myself away from my comfy, warm cor­ner of the couch, throw­ing off my blan­ket to look out the win­dow and see for myself. Sure enough. Two ambu­lances and a firetruck were parked in front of the neigh­bors’ house.  As I watched, I saw some­one wheeled out on a gur­ney and placed into the ambu­lance. When it pulled away from the curb, there was no siren.

The folks who live in that house have been ill this win­ter. They are good Chris­t­ian peo­ple who worked hard their whole lives, raised a lovely fam­ily, paid for their home. And they have con­tin­ued liv­ing inde­pen­dently in that home well into “golden years.” Their chil­dren and grand­chil­dren come by reg­u­larly to look after and assist them.

Vir­tu­ally every day, I read the obit­u­ar­ies in our local news­pa­per and see names that I rec­og­nize. No, I don’t always know the dece­dent per­son­ally. But I fre­quently know one or more of their sur­viv­ing fam­ily mem­bers. Some­times a busi­ness col­league has lost a spouse. Thank­fully, I only rarely read that some­one in my age range is griev­ing the loss of a child. But at least sev­eral times per week, I note that one of my con­tem­po­raries is say­ing good-bye to a parent.

The older I get, the more I appre­ci­ate that all the cliches about the quick pas­sage of time are com­pletely true. I look in the mir­ror and won­der who the woman star­ing back at me could pos­si­bly be. I look at my chil­dren and won­der what hap­pened to the babies I car­ried. I look at my friends and secretly won­der if I look at old as they do, know­ing full well, of course, that I do. I know just how old I am when, as tonight, I start to get up after sit­ting in one spot for awhile and real­ize that I just don’t “spring into action” the way I did just fie years ago. I noted the stiff­ness in my legs as I walked to the win­dow to see what was hap­pen­ing at the neigh­bors’ house.

As the ambu­lance pulled away, I chat­ted on the tele­phone with another neigh­bor who apprised me of the sit­u­a­tion and we decided how best to assist our mutual neighbors.

After I hung up, I couldn’t help but won­der what my life will be like when — “God will­ing,” as my mother used to say — I am my neigh­bors’ age. Who will care for me? Who will care about me? Will I be able to live com­fort­ably in my home for as long as those folks have? Will I have all of the mate­r­ial things that I need? How will I spend my last days on earth?

As I con­tin­ued gaz­ing at the neigh­bors’ house, I remem­bered that the sea­son of Lent has begun. Dur­ing the next 40 days, Chris­tians will make a pil­grim­age to the foot of the cross on Good Fri­day, but cel­e­brate new life on Sun­day morning.

I real­ized that Jesus already pro­vided the answers to all the ques­tions that were swirling in my head.

“If you decide for God, liv­ing a life of God-worship, it fol­lows that you don’t fuss about what’s on the table at meal­times or whether the clothes in your closet are in fash­ion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stom­ach, more to your outer appear­ance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfet­tered, not tied down to a job descrip­tion, care­less in the care of God. And you count far more to him than birds.

“Has any­one by fuss­ing in front of the mir­ror ever got­ten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion—do you think it makes that much dif­fer­ence? Instead of look­ing at the fash­ions, walk out into the fields and look at the wild­flow­ers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the coun­try look shabby along­side them.

“If God gives such atten­tion to the appear­ance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m try­ing to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so pre­oc­cu­pied with get­ting, so you can respond to God’s giv­ing. Peo­ple who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about miss­ing out. You’ll find all your every­day human con­cerns will be met.

“Give your entire atten­tion to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not hap­pen tomor­row. God will help you deal with what­ever hard things come up when the time comes.”

Matthew 6:25–34
The Message

My neigh­bors are hav­ing a dif­fi­cult time, so I ask you to say a prayer for them now, as you are read­ing this. But they are life-long believ­ers — strong and faith­ful. The out­come of their cur­rent cri­sis is unknown to any of us, but one thing is assured: They are in the lov­ing hands of the Divine Cre­ator who will not aban­don them or their loves ones. All of their “con­cerns will be met.”

“Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions.” What a fab­u­lous sum­ma­tion of what we should do and where our focus should be each and every day.

Yes, my knees are stiff when I get up after sit­ting in one place for a period of time, but after a cou­ple of steps, they loosen up and I am able to walk long dis­tances with no dif­fi­culty. For that I am thank­ful. I have a couch inside a home which is warm dur­ing this very cold Feb­ru­ary because I have suf­fi­cient resources to turn up the heat. For that I am thank­ful. I am healthy and able to go to work each day to earn the daily bread my fam­ily needs. For that I am thank­ful. I per­form work that is both per­son­ally mean­ing­ful to me and pro­vides value to the com­mu­nity. For that I am thank­ful. Every­one else within my house­hold is healthy. For that I am thankful.

I don’t know the answers to any of the ques­tions that swirled through my head as I thought about my neigh­bors’ plight. I am not meant to see into the future but, rather, to be faith­ful and trust that I will receive all the help I need to “deal with what­ever hard things come up when the time comes.” I was born to be “care­less in the care of God.” For that, I am most thankful.

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