A Great Coincidence (but not really)

Tonight Derek and I are rejoicing because of a wonderful way that the Lord has provided for us - and in perfect timing too!  I love it when God works out coincidences (but not really coincidences) for us!

First, the back-story:

This Fall, I've been working through the book of Leviticus, but recently I've veered away from that book and sought out reassurance from Paul's writings as I struggle to trust God to provide for us.  This morning for my personal devotions I decided to return to Leviticus, however, and I found that I had left off at chapter 25.

Leviticus 25 describes the instructions God gave the Israelites regarding the Sabbath year and year of Jubilee.  Every seventh year, the Israelites were to abstain from planting or harvesting on their fields, and give the fields a sabbath rest.  Also, every fiftieth year, land was to be returned to its original owner, and slaves would be freed.  All of this, it struck me, would take a definite dose of confidence in God to provide.  But God answers this response in verse 18-21,

Follow My decrees and be careful to obey my laws, and you will live safely in the land.  Then the land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and live there in safety.  You may ask, "What will we eat in the seventh year if we do not plant or harvest our crops?"  I will send you such a blessing in the sixth year that the land will yield enough for three years.

So God acknowledged that the human temptation would be to worry that if we plan a year when we don't work the land, we will starve.  And here's the part that I never noticed before...  He didn't just tell them not to worry.  He explained that He would provide three-fold during their harvest on the sixth year, so that before that year of rest, they would already have what they needed to walk forward confident in God's provision.

So I was reading this and thinking about my own struggle to trust God for His provision during the coming months as Derek and I have relinquished our primary incomes and will be moving into full-time support raising.  And I asked myself, "has God done for us, what He promised to do for the Israelites in their season of increased dependence?"  And the answer I came to is, yes, He has.  Not only has God provided enough financial partners for us already to meet the basic needs we will have over the next several months, but He has also provided us with some investments which we can liquidate if we need to - and some of which we were thinking we'd go ahead and take out in the next couple of days.  God has provided ahead of time.

But then another thought jumped into my mind.  The car.  Wouldn't it be awesome, I thought, if God also arranged for us to get a really great return from our car insurance company for our vehicle that was totaled at the end of October?  That would sure be some nice extra padding in the bank!  (Explanation: the claim was still outstanding, so while we were pretty sure we would get something back for the car at some point, there seemed to be little progress to that effect in the past month and a half) 

Ok, now fast forward to this afternoon when Derek got a call from none other than our insurance agency!!  It turns out that in the next few days we will receive a check for way more than we ever thought we'd get for the car.  In fact, we're getting almost what we paid for it five and a half years (and 70,000 miles) ago.  No need to liquidate investments now.  No cause to worry.  Praise the Lord! 

Praise the Lord Who provides for His people!
Praise the Lord Who always has perfect timing!
Praise the Lord Who can even speak through crazy weird books like Leviticus!  :)

Thankful!

We found out recently that one of our donors works for a company who will match their employee's charitable giving at 100%!  We are encouraged and thankful for awesome friends who not only support us and pray for us, but look for ways to help even more.  Also, how incredible that businesses do this sort of thing?  Praise the Lord!

Racing in the Kitchen

There are several doors in the kitchen that we try to keep Finn out of - the closet door, the refrigerator door, and the dishwasher door.  Finn has figured out that we have to open all of these from time to time, however, and that when we do, he has to act fast if he wants to get inside before we can close them again.  So tonight I was putting things on the table for dinner while Finn was playing on the floor in the kitchen and every time I opened one of those doors, Finn would drop what he was doing and make a dash for it.  Even if he was behind me I could hear his breathing begin to race and his little hands slapping against the tile floor as he raced toward whatever it was in attempt to stake his claim to it before I could get it shut.  It was absolutely hilarious.  He doesn't get upset if I pulled him away, but he tried again and again and again. 

Family Mentorship

I think that after a Christian couple is married, but before they start a family, they should spend a few days - or maybe a week - shadowing a family who they would like to emulate in their approach to living for God as a family.  Derek and I were so blessed to have the opportunity to do this and it was SO helpful and encouraging.  The family we spent time with was not perfect (obviously) but as a result we got to see not only how they prioritized activities and interactions as a family and with others, but how they confronted sin as a family. It helped us make decisions early on that I hope will lead to some of the same results we saw in this precious family.

I think there is such value to watching how the gospel affects the day-in day-out interactions of family life that can not be seen through simply observing other families in public settings, or for limited time spans (like going to their house for dinner).  When you live with a family, you see the bed-time routine, the wake-up routine, how discipline happens, how the family interacts with neighbors and other acquaintances, how the adults find time to worship individually, and how the family worships together.  You find out about sacrifices that are made for the sake of prioritizing things that are important to the family, and you find out what everyone in the family really thinks about it.

I think in ages past, before the days of vehicles and telephones, peoples lives just naturally intersected like this a lot more, but in today's busy society, we mostly see how other families operate when they are operating under an in public set of rules that differs from those that define their daily lives at home.  We form conclusions about other families based on what we see in public and never pick up on integral choices the family has made which lead to the outcomes we see and want (or don't want, as the case may be).

It's easy to form a set of ideals in your mind for how family life should go, but applying those ideals to the craziness of your own life can be an incredibly difficult task--especially after your multiple years and children into establishing your family's norms.  I think shadowing a gospel-driven family would help.  Obviously there are no perfect families and obviously this host family would need to be gracious enough to not only welcome you and your spouse into their family, but commit to a level of transparency before you during your visit.  As with any mentorship or discipling relationship, a deep level of humility would be required for both parties, but that's what we're called to anyway, right?