These are exceptional, surreally strange times, but maybe it takes an exceptional, surreally strange time to get our undivided attention, and take us back to the basics.
Lots of people are anxious about the government's decisions regarding COVID-19, some criticizing social distancing initiatives or diminishing the virus in resistance to emergency measures. It's understandable—making these kinds of cataclysmic changes means huge impacts on all our lives, especially on financial security. If people can't go to work, they can't bring home a paycheque to provide for their families, and that is terrifying.
Me, I had big plans for this year, for this summer. Plans to clock as many hours as possible at work, to find a second job, and to start saving for post-secondary as soon as I possibly could. So much for that—just when I thought I had my financial future under control, I'm now waiting for my workplace to open again, all too aware of the wrench this crisis has thrown in my careful calculations.
I'm not panicking by any means, but I'm beginning to get a taste of the pressure that comes with changes to financial situations. And yet, I was reminded this morning of a passage I've known for years . . . and maybe for the first time, I get it.
Look at the birds. They don't plant or harvest or store in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren't you far more valuable to him than they are? ~Matt. 6:26
When I memorized this verse as a fourth grader, somehow I didn't grasp all the deeper implications. But now, faced with the anxious temptation to start the storing-in-barns process ASAP, I'm comforted by this reminder that Jesus meant what he said. He provides for the birds—creatures totally at the mercy of their circumstances—not with a surplus or emergency stock, but with daily bread, new every morning.
God loves the birds. He made them. But guess what? He made us, too. And if He provides daily for the creatures He doesn't call children, think of the wonders He will work to provide for his beloved sons and daughters.
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