God is holy. God is love. God is just.
Sometimes these ideas are too abstract, it is easier to understand an attribute of God when we have some story to go with it. An example of His faithfulness, justice, or loving-kindness in our lives makes it easier to understand what type of God made us... powerful, but good and merciful.
I talk about God in the abstract all the time, but lately, I have been understanding an abstract God in a very concrete way.
My God is faithful, and He provides. He is the Provider.
Sometimes we shy away from this aspect of God, fearing that we will turn into money-grubbing wolves that rub our buddha bellies hoping for health, wealth, and happiness. That would be a mistake.
On the other extreme, we forget that God does not leave us alone to fend for ourselves in the world's unstable economy. He cares for the sparrows, and He cares for us.
I have been reading Genesis lately, and I was asking for a new revelation. I have read it so many times, I feel like I could recite the stories verbatim (okay, not quite). It felt dry, like a story told a few too many times.
Then I started thinking about Joseph. Through the most terrible of circumstances, God provides for him. He is betrayed and sold into slavery by his brothers, bought as a servant, rises to high position, is accused of raping the master's wife, and then thrown into jail.
Eventually Joseph gets out of jail because God helps him interpret dreams, and he becomes second only to the Pharaoh in Egypt.
God brings his brothers to him because of a famine, and he is ultimately reconciled and reunited with his family.
When Joseph forgives his brothers he knows that God is the one who take care of them,
"But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life." --Genesis 45:5
A story betrayal, prison, and famine doesn't exactly sound like a story of provision. But it was, and it stands out as one of the most incredible stories of God's providential care in the Old Testament. If you haven't read it, I encourage you to check it out.
Despite the assurances of Scripture, lately I have worried. I am finishing school. How am I going to start paying off loans, paying for insurance, etc? I become focused on the necessity of a job, and forget to ask for one.
Maybe God will make me wait, maybe not... can I trust the Provider?
I don't know if I understand all of this yet. I know many starve, and many feast. The rain falls on the just and on the unjust.
But I do know that God has taken care of me up until this point in my life, spiritually and physically.
Can I trust that He will continue to do so into the unknown?
Someday I may be hungry. I may be driven from my home. I may be betrayed. But what I do know is that God can decide to provide for me, like He provided for Joseph and his family in spite the worst of circumstances.
"Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!" --- Matthew 7:9-11
I will trust Him. My Father is good.
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