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God's Unexpected Provisions
by Margaret Becker, excerpted from Coming Up for Air
September 13, 2006
I know some people who hear from God all the time. It's like they've tapped into some hotline or something. I envy them. I am still on cans and string if frequency of communication is any measure. It takes a lot to get through to me, and this retreat I'm on is no exception.
I hardly ever get a "direct" word from on high. Mostly it is just an overall "sense" of things that cause me to move in a certain direction, which is either affirmed or thwarted according to its accuracy. Some would call that conviction or "leading." I wouldn't dare put a title to it for fear of glorifying the wrong thing and causing others to fend for themselves in my primitive world. Unique to me maybe, but effective over the years and as recently as this morning, when after one of my top five prayers—Lord, help me to see what I need to see—I had one of those overarching "sense" moments. It was about my need to be known and God's provision for it.
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart" (Jeremiah 1:5).
I have made it a habit to memorize Scripture right before falling asleep and when I run. Some of those passages I've made into rhythmic chants that mimic my cadence. This morning as I ran in the rain, that one came back to me, and a little part of the riddle found rest.
In a purely spiritual sense, I am known. In the most intimate sense of the word know, I am known and have been since before I took my first breath. God's response to my cry to "be known" is that he does. He knows me. He knows me better than I could ever know myself. And, of course, God—knowing the realist that I am—
knows I need to understand how this all plays out in my life, like where the "legs" are on these concepts.
After 45 minutes of off-kilter jogging in uneven sand, I plopped down on a sheared ledge at the shoreline. The tide was fully in, and the ledge I settled on was stately but not strong. It was formed only last night. I poked holes in the crispy upper layer as I had my next primal epiphany: God was already attempting to meet my relational needs—I just wasn't letting him.
Names, situations, attempts for relationship that I spurned or—worse yet—dismissed presented themselves like witnesses at a trial. There were people already in my life who were part of God's provision for me, yet I did not have eyes to see them because they were not presenting themselves in a form I expected.
I expected.
I expected the answer to my needs to come in the form of one person, a husband, who would bring an extended family. One relationship, one man to fill all my needs? And in the meantime, while I am waiting on whatever, I am not recognizing or receiving God's provision in these areas.
The church in Acts came to mind. People—as in plural—providing for people. Community. Bound together by circumstance perhaps—something we view as a detriment in this day and age, a weakness almost. We are raised to be emancipated, to seclude ourselves from one another in order to limit our exposure to one another. I wonder if it is a thinly veiled attempt to escape the "iron sharpening iron" process that occurs naturally when, due to mutual dependence or survival, you can't just walk out the door. This expectation of striking out on one's own can be destructive to community, both familial and extended.
It's a shame we don't live more centrically, with our families closer in. We need their wisdom and their "knowing"—the sense of being known by someone who has known us all our lives. And that is just the obvious example. Most of us don't have our grandparents, our extended family near us. That is the fact, but then there is the promise: that God will set the solitary in families. Fact or promise?
The promise is what I mull over as I slide down the front of the cliff to walk the moist edge of the receding tide. My feet sink deep as I remember people like Keith, who commandeered me off the subway in New York after church one afternoon. There at the station's descending entry, he grabbed my arm for at least the fourth
Sunday in a row, imploring me, locking my eyes through his thick horn-rimmed glasses.
"Margaret, we absolutely will not take no for an answer this week. You will come and stay the afternoon and, if need be, the night with us. This is what "church" is : family!"
Off I went with him, back up to Harlem, where his wife, Rita, and their two children were already sprawled out on their tiny apartment floor surrounded by The New York Times and coloring books in radiant sunlit patches. Soup was on the stove, and classical music played in the background. I stayed there most of the day,
doing what families do—talking, resting, watching television I probably would never watch alone—intermittently bored and comforted. But that's what relationship is to some degree, isn't it? It's not all go-go-go! or whooo-who!! It was the first of many comforting/familial—as in God's community—afternoons I would spend with that family.
That was God's provision for me—to be set in a family. To belong. To be known. I didn't take it seriously enough.
Halfway back home from my run, the parade of overlooked provisions continues. There are names and opportunities and open doors I so insensitively pushed shut because I didn't see it as God's provision. It didn't look like what I was expecting.
Almost home, on stair number three, my guilt trip is a bit assuaged when I realize that better women than myself had made the same mistakes, and those mistakes were now the parables of generations. Like Mary and Martha, when they expected Jesus to come to their house (Luke 10:38-42). They both were believing that Jesus—their friend and the Son of God—would show up. But there was a difference in their expectation of how he would show up. Mary recognized him—the provision of his presence, the provision in him—immediately when he arrived, and she stopped everything—including "preparing" the house for him—to enjoy, experience, and learn from him.
But as it would be for any one of us if someone that important were expected at our house, there were certain "preparations" to be made, certain "tasks" to complete, and then God—his presence—would have the correct, conducive environment to show up. Martha didn't recognize that he had already shown up despite where she was in her own preparation for him. Despite Martha's conscientious efforts, Jesus bypassed the "traditions," the expectations that could possibly confuse the "expectant" Martha. Traditions or relationship? Law or love? My adherence or God's
benevolence? Which is it? Do we control God by doing things "just so"? Can we make him like us any better by doing it all "this way" or "that"?
Jesus spent most of his life here on earth being a breathing testament to never thinking you can figure God—or his systems—out. I am certain he wanted Martha's attention on him—his living, breathing presence in her immediate moment. I am also as certain he did not want her attentions on practices, social edicts, and "religiosity" instead. She missed God's provision in her own space—not because she was wicked or dull but because she had settled for someone else's definition of how he would come.
His words to her sting my own soul: "Martha, Martha … you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her" (Luke 10:41-42).
I know I'm not an anarchist—I just don't want to miss God. I don't want to walk along the edge of his order. I don't want to miss him, because I trust his order more than I trust him.
So as I peel away my moist paint-spattered holy sweatshirt, I begin what is now one of my top six prayers: God, help me to see your provision and choose "what is better." Make me a Mary.
Margaret Becker is an award-winning author, speaker, producer, songwriter, and recording artist. For more information on Margaret, please visit www.maggieb.com. Excerpt taken from Margaret Becker's book, Coming Up For Air and reprinted by permission of NavPress.
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