Providence

 

My people have committed two sins:

They have forsaken me,
    the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns - Jeremiah 2:13-14

I wake up today at 5 am. After almost a month of illness I am beginning to feel well, physically.

While ill, I had time to pray. More time than I’ve had in years and years.

I had prayed for a prayerful Christmas. God provides. 

God provides. Even in poverty, even in illness. God’s food doesn’t taste like earthly bread. His manna sustains the soul.

Today,  up at 5am the old floodgates open and perennial concerns assail the mind.

Worries, doubts, uncertainties. Pensions or lack of, children’s exams, driving, baby’s health, health, things I should have said or done or not done, dreams, life.

The ancient enemy tries with every weapon to undo the days of communion. To make irrelevant intentions made in childlike faith, to The One who gave me rest. 

Jesus’s yoke is truly easy and His burden light. He is gentle. You will find rest for your souls in Him. It’s when it is hardest to choose Him that it is most essential to choose Him. He is the only sure path, the only shelter, the only real peace.

There is rest in Him, but  not in this fractious world.

His peace is a peace the world cannot give.

His peace is beyond understanding.

You cannot serve both God and wealth.

I completely trust in His providence. I have learned that His providence is not that which the world can give. His providence comes in many forms. All can be trusted.

His manna fills my soul. 

And He humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know, that He might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live. - Deuteronomy 8:3

“Come, all you who are thirsty,
    come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
    come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
    without money and without cost.
2 Why spend money on what is not bread,
    and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
    and you will delight in the richest of fare. - Isaiah 55:1-2

I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt. Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it. - Psalm 81:10

On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” - John 7:37-38m