Fifty-seven cents. That was the balance of the church checkbook when I left the neighborhood for a few days of meetings at church headquarters. We had been through a series of expensive crises in rapid succession without a whole lot of cash to start with. Our donors from outside the neighborhood had just been generous enough to keep us afloat for the past two months. With all our regular bills and summer camp fees on the horizon we were down to fifty-seven cents.
After the final service of the event at headquarters I stopped by the Temple sanctuary for one last set of prayers before catching the plane home into the reality of the world of fifty-seven cents.
Just before I said "Amen," a woman came up to me and whispered, "You're Jeff from Baltimore, right?" Upon my nod, she said, "Take this" and left the room.
What she gave me was exactly enough cash to buy the pizzas for that evening's youth activities that I was leading upon landing.
All the problems were not solved, the crisis was not over, but things were OK. They were OK because of the precision of God's understanding of the situation.
Yes, He could have followed my plan by sending $1M, taking the full temporal burden away. But the reminder of His intimate understanding of the needs at hand carried me further than my quick fix idea would have.
Jesus reminds us that even the hairs on our head are numbered (Luke 12:7). Even when going bald (in my case sometimes figuratively, always literally), knowledge that He knows me and my situation with immeasurable precision makes me a little more willing to let Him work in His ways than trying to force my ways on Him.
Lord, help me always to remember how well You know me and my circumstances. Through that knowledge let me better trust Your ways in my life.
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