The Sylvr Pen

To start today in a different way, I shuffle back into the bedroom with my mug of coffee to floor-sit at the window.

I haven’t done this in a while. I used to sit here nearly every morning, till the comfortable new chair in my upstairs study started taking preference. Then later, to escape the rooster’s sunrise racket, I fled to the guest room for a quieter time with my Lord. 

But today, the thought of sunrise draws me, though I can’t guess how brilliant or bland it might be. 

It’s softly lovely as I first sit here, almost calling for a camera. But no, I decide, I just want to rest my thoughts quiet and alone with God and let the beauty gently bless me, uninterrupted by ambitious picture-taking.

But soon… it’s growing glory. I clamber up and run for the camera. 

And shoot. And shoot…

…and share with you, this morning, for any morning you need a sunrise to wake and cheer you.

So today, no profound thoughts. Just this, and a couple scriptures. Enjoy a glimpse of God’s glory manifest. And may He richly bless your day!

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 Linked to

What happens when your faith grows enough that you actually trust and obey God in money matters even when doing that seems utterly mad?

A) God intervenes and supplies all needs, and all turns out well?

B) Finances go from bad to worse, and soon it looks certain that such radical trusting was madness?

I saw the answer in living color that year I went back to teaching, that winter of my wild intent…

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It was cold, that un-insulated room in January, I remember that. Teeth-chattering cold. Tiny that room was, but not tiny enough for one small woman’s body-heat, emanating from the stark twin bed, to warm it. Winds blew fiercer, this side of the house. That’s why Little One got Bigger Room, also to enjoy more cheery sunlight and better cushioning of superhighway noise whooshing by outside, constant as ocean waves down at the Jersey shore.

I shivered, but what robbed my sleep that restless night wasn’t cold—but worry.

It was late. I needed sleep. But my agitation wouldn’t allow it. Perched on the bed’s edge, scratching tense numbers all over lined school paper, I added, subtracted, pondered, schemed—trying to make it work.

It didn’t. I couldn’t possibly live more frugally than now, couldn’t cut a single budget item. What was I going to do!

I calmed myself. Maybe leave out the tithe this month? God would understand.

No, even then, I couldn’t pay the whopping car insurance, plus the bigger heat bill, plus everything else.

Borrow money on my bank line of credit?

Just to owe it later, plus interest? No! Debt had been partly what got me where I now was. I did not want to go back there.

Ask for an advance on my pay?

I’d only run short later. Maybe keep falling behind…

Call Mom and Dad?

No way. They’d unknowingly been my answered prayer three times already…

Suddenly, I decided. Crumpling my scribbled papers, I flung them in the wastebasket, declared to God, “I haven’t squandered. You’ve always supplied. I’m just going to keep trusting You!” And I climbed in between those cold sheets and went decidedly, soundly, to sleep.

~

Pay day. (Monthly pay day.) I wrote checks. First one? Tithe! This was an act of faith, a plunge. I’d plunged a lot in recent years, and hadn’t hit concrete yet.

Next? Oil bill. Nonpayment could mean no fuel delivery. Next, rent. Similar reason: Don’t lose the roof overhead. Then day care (If you don’t pay, they don’t care)…

I’d wait for the child support check and pay a few more bills with it. Beyond that… I decided not to ask anyone. I decided not even to tell anyone. I’d just trust God—alone.

~ 

The month rolled on. So did the car, back and forth to and from work, burning up gas. Fridge and cupboard were emptying out… And the child support check didn’t come—First. Time. Ever!

And so I reached that morning: Seven cents in the wallet, gas gauge on E, and all those money demands before evening—and I laughed. (No, it was not hysteria. Check it out here.)

I once heard someone compare Christian faith to climbing a tree, going out on a limb, sawing off the limb… and watching the tree fall down. Well, I was there now! What would fall? Tree or limb?

I prayed, turned the ignition key, drove off to the day care center, then work—and got there! How I’d get home was a problem for later. Right now I was down to trusting God not just one day, but one hour, at a time.

At school: busy, busy. So busy, I forgot my crisis (really!)—till recess. Then I visited the office to get my mail. There in my mailbox, what was this? Plain envelope, my name on it. With no clue, I still couldn’t wait to get it open! Frantic fingers, fumbling…

Sure enough, inside was a crisp ten-dollar bill. And a note. Signed by one of the secretaries. Was she writing for herself, or someone else? I’d never gotten any note from her before. “This is to help defray the evening’s expenses. This is strictly confidential.”

Who had engineered this? Why?

I had no inkling, on the human level.

But I knew the Ultimate Source! Near bursting, I wanted to leap down those ancient, proper, prep-school steps shouting, “Praise the Lord!”

I kept my decorum, however, of course, but inside my joy was exploding.

Back home, the cupboard sat bare. So did the gas tank here. But I now had enough to stretch between a bit of gas and barely enough to pay the babysitter. And we’re only supposed to concern ourselves with one day at a time, right? Just like with the manna?

Still, I couldn’t wait to get home and look in my mailbox there…

~

I pulled in the driveway, put the car in Park. Jumped out, ran to said mailbox. There, inside, just two bits of mail.

1) Apology note from my landlady, sorry the escrow interest (I didn’t know she owed me) was late. And a check.

2) Bank statement—for an account I didn’t know I still had!

This was no fortune—thirty-five dollars in the bank account, less in the escrow check—but enough to stretch beyond hours to days, for just enough gas and food to scrape through the week.

It finally came then, too, the child support check.

And the call into the lower school office. Would I be willing to take these two after-school tutoring jobs?

So by its end, that month yielded more income than any in years. All bills paid! Cash to spare! And an unforgettable faith lesson that helps me even up to today: 

Not to worry about money.

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Thanking Him today…

~for showing me I can always depend on Him.

~for showing me it is not foolish to obey His seemingly foolish commandments and instructions.

~for always supplying whatever I need

~for taking me through the blessed straits where I could learn the best lessons, which come nowhere else

~for His sure words that show me what to trust

~for the stories of trust and supply others shared with me, that helped me learn God-trust.

…..

REASONS TO PRAISE HIM from Matthew 6:24-33.

• 358 – Because He knows, as our heavenly Father, what things we have need of before we ask
• 359 – Because He clothes the lilies of the field even more spectacularly than even Solomon in all His glory
• 360 – Because He promises to clothe us, too, oh us of little faith
• 361 – Because He feeds even the birds, who need not sow or reap or store in barns
• 362 – Because He will surely then feed His children
• 363 – Because His eye is on the sparrow, and not one of them falls to the ground without His knowing
• 364 – Because in His eyes each of His children is worth more than many sparrows.
• 365 – Because He promises that whoever seeks first His kingdom and His righteousness will find all these things added to him/her.
• 366 – Because His own therefore do not have to worry about tomorrow.

*****

 A blessing.

It was the rain, come gentle and soft on brittle brown grass. Mere mist, then soft shower, then finally, when all was softened to soak it up, the downpour.

And before our eyes the brown came green, the life blushed up, to take in light from above and thrive again.

Let my teaching drop as the rain, My speech distill as the dew, As raindrops on the tender herb, And as showers on the grass.         -Deuteronomy 32:2

*****

Linked to

On the prompt “Enough”…

Is it enough: just seven cents in your wallet and so little gas in the tank that the pointer says “E” and you have to 1) get yourself to work fifteen minutes away and that little one beside you to the day care center on the way, and then 2) get both of you back home afterward, and then you have to 3) go to that required function tonight—so you have to a) go pick up the babysitter and b) get back to school and then c) come home and pay the sitter and d) drive him back home, and then e) get back home yourself—and there’s hardly anything left in the cupboard or fridge and no pay coming for three more weeks and little mouths get hungry? Is it enough?

No.

It’s not enough.

Is HE enough in all of that?

YES!

I knew He was. I knew somehow He’d supply or I never would have sat there and laughed, laughed out loud, with the little one beside me in the car seat (we did that, toddlers in the front seat, then). Laughed out loud and declared heavenward, right in front of the child and the silent morning world, “Maybe I’m crazy, Lord, but I just expect you to drop money out of the sky!” And off we drove…

Then what happened?

Come back Monday (I almost wrote Money… heehee) Time’s up for now!

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[Writing for just five minutes this morning, on the Five-Minute-Friday prompt “Enough.” I wasn’t going to, it’s so out of sync with the series of posts unfolding on my blog (or is it?…) But I had to. It’s a story that should not lie silent.]

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Linked to Five Minute Friday.

Ever have a conversation that wasn’t?

I mean, the person with whom you were “conversing” kept blathering on without pause for breath and you couldn’t find an opening anywhere for a word of your own?

Or, no matter how you tried to evoke genuine response from the other party, all you could get were absent-minded grunts and one-word answers like “Mmm…,” “Uh-huh”…

Or, all through the “conversation,” (s)he kept looking anywhere but at you, maybe even interrupting, suddenly pointing a finger toward a window or elsewhere, exclaiming, “Look at that!” or some other totally off-the-subject remark…

…so that you finally just gave up and went silent yourself?

We do those kinds of things to God, don’t we?

So often we either just run at the mouth in prayer, paying no attention to what He might be saying to us, or we don’t interact with Him honestly, openly. Sometimes, to be honest, maybe we don’t even care what He has to say about an issue at all…

This kind of non-communication stifles closeness in any relationship — with people, or with God.

If my aim is really to grow CLOSER to my Lord, to interact and walk more intimately with Him, I need to both be honest and tune myself in to Him. I need to look at Him instead of my own mental mirror. I need to listen closely for His voice, strive to “get” exactly what He’s saying, hear it with my heart.

I think that’s what James was referring to when he wrote, “Be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to get angry” (Jas 1:19). Because if you consider the context...

It goes back to verse 5: “If any of you lacks wisdom let him ask of God…,” followed by verses telling us to expect an answer. [CORRECTION: the text tells us to expect to receive wisdom, not necessarily a specific answer to a specific question we’ve asked.]

Then, following 1:19, it says to receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save us. Well, that’s God’s word, God’s speaking.

A call to God becomes a conversation by not just jabbering after we call to Him, but also listening to what He says to us.

Those men and women who lived good examples in this closer walk with God (lots of them) speak of ongoing “conversation” with God, and by it they mean just that, two-way interaction.

I am remembering George Mueller’s account of one of his usual walks, literally with God, heading to a certain destination, and conversing with God all the way, not just talking at Him, but seeking His counsel as he went.

Repeatedly Brother Lawrence used the term “conversation,” and what made his countenance so glowing wasn’t his own words, but his awareness of God’s presence in the conversation. That of Christ flowed out into and through Him. He was a ready recipient.

In the Bible, both Elijah and Job (for example) expected an answer from God, eventually, and both received one. [CORRECTION: Each received a reply. We don’t know if Job ever in his earthly life did get the answer as to why he suffered so.]

God answered Elijah in a “still small voice.” We don’t know how Job received God’s reply. How do we discern what He has to say to us?

I’m still working this out! But I’ve learned a few things, from scripture, from examples in Bible characters and godly people of more recent times. (Particularly helpful is George Mueller, who even wrote guidelines for determining God’s direction in any situation.)

More about this later. But for now, we know God speaks to us in His everlasting word. So when we “converse,” let’s look not only to but at Him, and at His word. Let us listen to what He says.

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