Miracles in the midst of want

I mentioned in my last entry that not all Christians judged us for our financial failure.

Some of them loved us through it, supported us with prayer and with kind words.

Still others went the extra mile and were willing to be God's provision for us as and whenever He led them to do that. It always turned out to be the perfect timing.

One day, about half-way through that nine months, I noticed that less and less of my clothes were fitting me. That was because we could only afford starches and high-fat meats. "Lord," I prayed. "I only have a couple of outfits left. I need some clothes, but I can't afford to go buy any, not even at the second-hand stores." Within two days, one person (I still don't know who) left a garbage bag on our back step filled with clothes... nice ones. Most of them fit me, and what didn't fit me, fit my oldest girl so she could hand down some of her clothes to her younger sister.

We didn't talk much about our problems, but there were those whose lives were affected directly, people we had to tell. Among those were members of our extended family. We got varying reactions from them, everything from hand-wringing worry from those who knew what it was to be in want, to something similar to "Let them eat cake" from those who had no clue what financial distress even looked like.

It just about drove my mother-in-law crazy that she couldn't write us a check for a hundred dollars and make everything okay for us. She even wanted to open a bank account for us. We told her that any extra money that anyone gave us would be confiscated by the bankruptcy trustee to pay the creditors with. She wanted US to benefit, not the people we owed. So every week, she would send her husband over to our house to drop off about three grocery bags of meat. Chicken legs or thighs, pork chops, lean hamburger, whole chickens. Sometimes even the occasional package of steak. She didn't get much in the run of a month; she called it "mad money." That she would spend her own money on us - just blew me away.

We never went without. There were times, the day before my husband's payday, that we had to rummage through the couch cushions for change. He'd go down the street with his head down - he was looking for coins people dropped. But with the generosity of some of God's saints, and His miraculous provision, our family never went hungry.

The first God-miracle we noticed though, came when the trustee sent an appraiser to look at our house, to see if it could be sold to pay the creditors. He made his assessment, looked at our mortgage, which we'd added to about five years previous in order to finish the basement, and told us that if the house were sold, there wouldn't be enough equity left over to pay the realty fees AND have enough to pay some to the creditors. So we got to keep the house.

A particularly trying time came when the tax department, who had been auditing my husband's taxes, decided to press charges for tax evasion. They knew full well that he couldn't fight the tax department in his situation of bankruptcy. He had made some errors in judgment about two years previous, based on lack of information about tax changes, and they decided he would be a great object lesson to anyone who wanted to have a home business and do their own taxes. Anyway, we had no extra money for a lawyer. The court date came, and the judge called his name. He stood up and the judge said, "Where is your lawyer?" He said he didn't have any. "Get one, and be back here in two weeks."

We found a lawyer willing to take our case but he charged a fee of $600. It was an enormous sum of money for a cash-only budget. It certainly wasn't an approved expense. However, my husband went to the trustee and told him the situation. Finally, after much pleading and arm-twisting, the trustee said, "Well, there's the third pay period this month. Out of that, you pay the mortgage and the lawyer. We get the rest." What about groceries, my husband asked. "No. The mortgage, and the lawyer. Nothing else."

When I heard this news, I was overcome with worry. No grocery money for two whole weeks?? How would we survive? How could anyone survive?

I needed help - some message from God to know what to do.

God was punching down the clay. Jeremiah 17 says that the clay was marred in the hand of the potter, so He made it again another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make it. That's what was happening.

In desperation I opened the Scriptures. "Please tell me what to do, Lord. We are so in need of Your guidance." Somehow I remembered the story of the widow who was financially destitute. Her children were going to be sold into slavery to pay her debts. And she went to the prophet to ask him what to do. Of course this is the story of the widow's cruse of oil that didn't run out until she had enough oil to sell to pay her debts. But there was a part of the story that had escaped me... until it jumped off the pages of the Bible at me. When she explained her predicament, the prophet said, "What do you have in the house?"

I stopped. What did I have in the house? Well, now. I didn't know exactly.
"Find out," said a little voice in my head. Or was it my heart?

I decided to do an inventory. I went through the fridge and the cupboards, and put together a menu plan for 14 days' worth of breakfast, lunch, supper, and snacks. It amazed me that the little bit of food in the house would last that long. We actually had enough food. I discovered that if handled right, one pound of hamburger could stretch for three meals for two adults and two children. The only thing we had to buy in that 2 weeks was one container of milk. The loose change paid for that.

God had provided; there was no other explanation for it!!

The court did impose a fine, by the way, near the end of our bankruptcy period. It was substantial - and the bankruptcy laws didn't allow for that debt to be erased since it was imposed by the court system. In a way it felt as though we'd gotten out of one mess and into another.

But God wasn't finished with His miracles yet.

Shoulds and Oughtas - Let the Walls Come Down

Remember the festive spirit that was present when the Berlin Wall came down?

The crowd cheering and roaring, the symbol of their captivity and oppression toppling before their eyes? it's a scene one doesn't easily forget. Some were yelling their heads off, some were throwing rocks at the wall, some were weeping, their faces in their hands. All great reactions to the tearing down of a thing that had been there all their lives, something that held them back, something that separated some of them from their loved ones, something that represented imprisonment, inhumanity, persecution, limitation.

On both sides of the wall before it came down, people went on with their lives and while they were doing so, some if not most of them probably justified their lifestyles. On the west side, people knew some of what was going on, on the other side. They'd heard the gunshots, they'd harbored those who had escaped, and they knew there were probably thousands of people on the other side of that wall who desperately wanted to get out but were afraid to try. Yet the ones in freedom were powerless to do anything to get them out. The decision had to be made by the people on the east side.

On the east side, there were those completely satisfied with the status quo, espousing the rhetoric of the government of the day. Others couldn't stand the oppression and risked their lives to leave. Few made it; the others were held up as an example of what happens to those who try. But there were still others (and dare I say these were the majority) who didn't want to risk life and limb to escape - yet they wistfully looked at that wall and wondered what life would be like if they were ever to be able to see on the other side.

I am going out on a limb here and saying that in many ways, the modern church is like living on the east side of the wall before it came down. Regimented, oppressive, judgmental, protectionist. Those who dare try to get out of that mold, the mold expected by the religious powers that be (I say religious deliberately), find themselves ostracized, stripped bare and crucified by the same people who say they espouse the teachings of Christ. But mostly, there are hundreds if not thousands of people who see the limitations, who despise the rules and regulations, and don't dare try to escape because they see how the ones who try to break free are treated. They want to be free. They hate what the church has become. Yet they have nowhere else to go. They know that only Jesus has the words of eternal life, and they are afraid that by "quitting Christianity" as one lady put it recently, they'll lose the only reference point they'll have, and will endanger their eternal soul. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The good news is that long ago, before we ever got in this horrible predicament, Jesus DID tear the wall down. The Bible tells us that the dividing wall that kept us from God was torn down when Jesus died on the cross. The veil of the Temple, six inches thick and several hundred pounds, that stood between the holy place and the most holy place - representing separation from God - was ripped from the top to the bottom as soon as Jesus cried out, "It is finished!" (From the Greek tetelestai, which means "accomplished" - in the sense of an unbreakable contract being fulfilled.) Did you get that? From the top to the bottom.

God Himself tore down the wall.

Relationship with Him trumps rules and regulations, the shoulds and the oughtas. It is about this life of intimacy, this life lived every moment in the Spirit of God, that Jesus said, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink! He who believes in Me, as the Scriptures said, 'out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water!' "

He comes to live inside of us when we claim Him as our personal Rescuer - the only way for us to approach a holy God. He forgives us. He makes us pure before Him. He loves us unconditionally. Passionately. Deeply.

The more we realize this, the more our gratitude overflows back to Him. It changes us on the inside...and overflows into a two-way love-relationship with Him: a oneness that can ONLY happen through the Spirit of God. Such a life can only be lived from the inside out, flowing from our trysting, our intimacy with Him. We love Him, the Bible says, because He first loved us. So, in response to His great love, our "return" love bursts out toward Him, overflows all over us and all over the lives of those with whom we come in contact.

In the context of that kind of intimacy, we don't need to "try" to live the Christian life. It's not something we have to put on like someone would put on a sweater. It is the inner glory, the love and the joy and the peace that clothe us from the inside, where He lives, where He loves us beyond our ability to comprehend, where we can't help but love Him back.

The question that gets us from behind the wall to where He waits for us is this:
Do we trust Him?

Are we willing to let go of everything we've leaned upon, all the s'postas and the gottas, all the stress we unnecessarily place on ourselves (as if it were up to US to save, heal, fix, and rescue everyone) - and give ourselves unreservedly with complete abandon ... to Him and Him alone? to turn our will and our lives - all of it - over to His loving care? Warts, failures, hurts, anger, pride, resentment, bitterness, fear, insecurity and all? just as we are?

It truly is a leap of faith. I'm not talking about "leaving the church." I'm talking about "embracing Christ" - walking in intimate relationship with Him.

I won't lie to you. It's a scary step. But His question still remains, perhaps as yet unanswered. "Will you trust Me?"

With that question hanging in the air, turn up the volume and listen to this story about a "Cosmic Cowboy" told in the 1970s by a man named Barry McGuire. Hear the call of Jesus in it: "Will you trust Me?"

Isn't it time? He's the only way out.
Go ahead ... jump.