Need

[ScottG]

My wife and I were married in between my first and second years of seminary. When she came to St. Louis, she worked three part-time jobs to support us. We lived for free on the third floor of a house occupied by an 87 year-old widow in exchange for taking care of the house and doing odd jobs to care for her. We needed very little to sustain life. That was good, because we had very little.

One time we were literally down to our last pennies. The next paycheck was a week away. We had some food to last us, but not enough. (Make no mistake, we were not in danger of starving – this was more of an inconvenience than a true threat to our existence!) We were frustrated and wondering what to do. When I was leaving my classes that day at the seminary, I checked my mailbox. I found a letter from a women’s group at a church in Illinois. It was a church to which I had no connection, I hadn’t even heard of it. The letter indicated that they just wanted to support a married seminary student with a simple gift to be a blessing. I was that student. There was a check for a couple hundred dollars. I felt like the widow who had found her lost coin. I wanted to tell everyone. We even invited people over to eat with us.

This was an exercise in trust. The whole experience was. Did we trust that God would provide for us no matter where he led us? In that instance, God was demonstrating his faithfulness. He was allowing us to see a little thing, so that we would be reminded of his provision in the larger things that we cannot see, forgiveness, restoration, life, protection. Praise God for the ways that he provides far more than we can hope for or imagine!