It was the day after my birthday. A Monday, as it so happened. When work was over for the day, the boss came up to me.
“We have to make some changes here,” he said. “You no longer have a position with us.” I stared at him in utter disbelief. This was totally out of the blue.
“We’re happy with your work,” he continued. “But we no longer have the provision to keep you on. We have to reduce staff.”
To say I was devastated was an understatement. I knew what it would mean to lose half of our income, and I wasn’t sure we could survive. Surely there must be a way out. Surely something else would turn up.
FUTILITY
It didn’t. Michael searched for better-paying work, all over the state. I looked for any kind of work at all, to no avail. Every time one of us came close to securing another position, something unexpected would come up and snatch it away. After this had happened a number of times, I began to feel hopeless, that our circumstances would never change. And living that way was hard. Really hard. We cut back on every expense that we possibly could, and it still wasn’t enough. So we cut our food budget in half, wondering at times how we would eat.
TEMPTING TO KEEP IT
We’d always returned a tithe to God, according to the biblical principle of returning a tenth of your income to the Lord. That belongs to Him. It was tempting to keep that money. Very tempting. But we’d made up our minds to be faithful, trusting that He would be faithful in return and that His provision would meet our needs. It was easy to say, but hard to do. I lost count of the times I was fearful of financial disaster in those days of hardship. It was especially hard at first, knowing that we couldn’t meet our needs by ourselves.
In time, despair pressed around me like a thick cloud. As the financial drought dragged on and on, and hardship plagued our every move, a thick curtain of depression closed around me, smothering every spark of joy in my existence. The road ahead looked endless and unchanging. With each failed attempt at changing our circumstances, my hopes sank lower. Each day loomed ahead, formidable with darkness and futility. I wished I could just go to sleep and not wake up.
Yet, it was in the midst of the thickest blackness that God somehow found me. I’d always believed in Him, but now I NEEDED Him. He became real to me, something I could hang onto when the darkness was overwhelming. And ironically, it was through the hardship of our circumstances that the greatest evidence of His care and provision came.
GOD’S PROVISION
It was April, and I knew that at the beginning of May, we would have some big bills to pay. I had no idea how we were going to pay them, and I started to get worried. And stressed. So stressed, in fact, that I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t get past the knot of anxiety in my stomach.
The deadline loomed larger and larger. Then about a week before, Michael came home with a spring in his step.
“Look at this!” he exclaimed, holding out his pay slip. “Seven hundred and eighty-four dollars!” He couldn’t wipe the grin off his face.
“How did that happen?” I asked, knowing that his regular pay slip was a lot less than that.
“This is extra!” he beamed. “Back in July, at the beginning of the financial year, I was supposed to get a small pay rise, but they missed it. It was only a few cents per hour. Then they found the mistake, and over ten months, this is what it added up to.” I was speechless. It was enough to pay the bills. I realized that God had provided for our needs, even when there seemed to be no way around the problem. I began to relax a little and trust in His provision. Just a bit.
The time dragged on, with no change in our circumstances. Over a year later, August was looking good, at least for that month. At the beginning of the month, we received an unexpectedly good tax return, and Michael lined up a week’s work with a builder friend, where he was paid double what he earned in his regular job. We were in sore need of some things that had been put on hold for a long time, and we had plans for that money.
DISASTER
It wasn’t to be. A few days after we received the tax return, our real estate manager rang. (By some miracle we’d been able to keep our house, which had tenants in it. The rent we received almost covered the cost of owning it).
“There’s a problem,” she said. “We’ve had some awful frosts this week, and the pipes in the roof of the house froze, then burst. It’s a huge mess. You’ll need to organize a quote for fixing it as soon as possible.”
A couple of days later, the quote came in.
“It’s $1500,” said the builder. I gulped, hoping the insurance would cover it.
They didn’t. The policy contained a clause which excluded water escaping from a burst pipe. We were on our own.
Around the same time, our home real estate agent rang.
“You’re behind on your rent,” she said.
“I don’t think so,” I replied. “I paid it. It should be up to date – I paid two weeks’ worth.”
“Well, we haven’t received it,” she said. Together, we did some investigating and discovered that somehow in the online banking process, it had gone missing. Lost somewhere in cyberspace. Two weeks’ rent was an awful lot of money to us. I started to get worried.
ATTACK
A few days later, Michael leapt out of bed in the middle of the night. Outside, a fearful cacophony of yelps and growls shattered the still night. He came back in very upset.
“Wild dogs,” he said. “Milo was in his kennel and they came into the yard and attacked him. I got there just in time – they were trying to kill him. He needs to go to the vet.”
I rang the vet while Michael got the car out. I went outside when I’d finished.
“Have you put him in the car yet?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “I hope he hasn’t died around the back.” At that moment, a slight noise caught my attention. Milo was painfully making his way around the corner of the house. His intestines were hanging low from his stomach, which was ripped open. When he saw us, he managed a wag of his tail, and he looked up at us with trust in his brown eyes. He knew he had to get help, and headed straight for the car.
“We have to do whatever it takes to save him,” Michael said, and helped him into the car to rest on a pile of towels. Then we drove off into the night.
Morning came, and the vet rang and told us that Milo had come through the operation, and although still at risk of infection, would most likely recover just fine.
“These kinds of attacks are usually fatal,” he said. “He’s a very lucky boy.”
$800 later, we took Milo home. It was a couple of months before his wounds were fully healed, and he had to stay in a temporary enclosure until we were able to erect a dog proof fence around the yard, but he eventually recovered. And after a number of weeks, the missing rent money returned from its jaunt into cyberspace, minus an explanation of where it went or why.
GOD’S PROVISION AGAIN
At the end of that month, I added up all the expenses. I was almost scared to do it – so many things had gone wrong. Then I added up the income we’d received, including the extra. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I looked at the two figures. The books balanced within a few dollars! Who would have thought it possible? Only the care of a God who is interested in our well being made it possible. He knew in advance that we would need extra that month, and He arranged it before we even knew we would need it.
After three years, the financial drought was finally over. Things changed, and life got a bit easier. But by the end of that time, I was no longer worried about whether or not our needs would be met. God had proven faithful over and over again, and I just knew that His provision would be sufficient to meet our needs.
So if you are in a similar situation, I want to encourage you to try trusting God to meet your needs. His provision is faithful – I can testify to that! If you aren’t sure about Him or don’t know much about Him, let me ask you this: What’s the worst that could happen? Give Him a try and let Him prove to you that He is faithful! Ask Him to show you.