Hungry II

Besides trying to grab control away from God, I also worry at times that He’ll forget about me. Those are the days when I’m trying to resist hunger because it’s a whole lot easier to afford not to eat (I’m either practicing up to be a starving writer by being a starving missionary or I practiced up for a career in missions by getting a degree in literature, or both). I spend all my thought time calculating and re-calculating and trying to devise clever schemes for how I can save money (let’s see, if I take napkins from McDonald’s…and plastic forks—ketchup’s no good, since they charge you 20 cents a package here). I wonder how long I can go on surviving like this. What’s worse, I worry about what kind of worrier I’ll be in the future. What if I ever have a family? I can picture myself with a starving husband and children, trying to convince them that cornbread and beans make a viable meal option—five days a week.

But this isn’t living as if God is God. Once again, I’ve tried to pretend to myself that I am, that if I’m just clever enough or twist the numbers in a certain direction, I’ll be okay, and then I can pat myself on the back for being such a good …um, steward. But the whole idea of being a steward is that none of this money is mine to begin with. It’s God’s. He has graciously given me enough to be able to eat right now, and has told me to trust Him tomorrow for tomorrow’s food. How foolish I am to act like He needs my plans for how to save money in order to be able to provide it. Doesn’t He take care of the sparrows of the air and the lilies of the field? Hasn’t He always provided for me before? Isn’t He—God?

Yes. And I am not God, but I am God’s, one of His sheep. Which means not only that I have to give Him control and obey Him, but—I can trust Him to provide for me too. He won’t forget me. So I can eat with thanksgiving.