Provision of God

Rodney Holbrook no longer has to clean up his shed—he has a mouse to do that. Holbrook, a wildlife photographer and retired mailman, noticed that things were moving around in his Builth Wells, Wales, shed overnight. He set up a night vision camera and discovered that a mouse was picking up nuts, bolts, corks, and other items and putting them back into their box.

Holbrook dubbed the tiny housekeeper "Welsh Tidy Mouse," and said that "99 times out of 100," the mouse cleans up during the night. Holbrook said the mouse seems to have fun moving the objects. He doesn't even "bother to tidy up now, I leave things out of the box and they put it back in its place by the morning.”

Watch the adorable 1-minute video here.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Throughout the Bible, God uses a variety of animals to help his people in significant ways. The Scripture references are just a few examples of the many ways God used animals to help, guide, and protect those he cares for. Each story offers unique insights into God's character and relationship with his creation.

Possibly overlooked by many is the fact that on at least one occasion, Jesus cooked for his disciples. John 21:9 records that the disciples had been out fishing. When they came to shore, they found Jesus on the beach with a meal. “When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread.”

Avery Gilbert, psychologist and fragrance scientist, writes that cooking is much more than just preparing a meal, it is an invitation. The savory notes of roasted meat and baked bread stimulate us enroute to a meal.

Food aroma is an invitation and a spur to action. Even before the first bite, it triggers an elaborate sequence of physiological events: salivation, insulin release by the pancreas, and the secretion of various digestive juices. The aroma of bacon, at a level so faint it can’t be consciously identified, has been shown to trigger the flow of saliva.

Possible Preaching Angles:

Jesus offers everyone an open invitation to eat and drink with him. “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me” (Rev. 3:20). “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” (Rev. 19:9).

The pandemic has done a lot of strange things to the global economy over the last 14 months, from creating a massive shortage of semiconductor chips to a ballooning supply of hand sanitizer.

The US housing market has gone haywire too, as urbanites took advantage of remote work to leave expensive cities and resettle in smaller towns across the US. But it's not all that simple. Glenn Kelman, the chief executive of Redfin, broke down some of his observations of just how unusual the current US housing market is in a Tuesday Twitter thread:

Inventory is down 37% year over year to a record low. The typical home sells in 17 days, a record low. Home prices are up a record amount, 24% year over year, to a record high. And still homes sell on average for 1.7% higher than the asking price, another record.

It has been hard to convey how bizarre the US housing market has become. For example, a Bethesda, Maryland homebuyer included in her written offer a pledge to name her first-born child after the seller. She lost.

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God’s people have no such worry. We have a guaranteed home in heaven, personally prepared by Christ, reserved in heaven for us. And, we should mention, it is fully paid for.

Singer/Songwriter Sandra McCracken writes in CT magazine:

There’s a call button above every seat on commercial airplanes. In all my travels, I don’t think I’ve ever used it. I’m not sure if that is due to shyness or to pride, as there have certainly been times when I acutely needed help while seated.

While traveling recently, for example, I endured some delays and was thirsty. Yet I waited to ask for anything until the plane reached 10,000 feet, when the flight attendants came row by row to grant our drink requests. I didn’t press the call button. It always seems more courteous to wait.

As Jesus hung on the Cross, one of the last phrases he spoke out loud was “I am thirsty” (John 19:28). This three-word inclusion in the Gospels is a subtle yet significant acknowledgment of Jesus’ human need. His thirst dignifies our humanity. He offered up this holy complaint, a declaration of his physical need. He pushed the call button.

God is the one who is responsible to supply our needs (Ps. 23:1; Phil. 4:19). Jesus invites us to participate, to receive, and to ask. Sometimes we are to ask and ask again (Luke 11:9; 18:1–8).

Jesus invites us to hit the call button. And he invites us to wait for him, sometimes well beyond when the plane has reached 10,000 feet. Ask and wait. Hope and receive. The springs of living water that he gives will never run dry.

In a message at the Carolinas Regional Chapter of The Gospel Coalition, Andy Davis offered the following:

I was reading Stephen Ambrose’s Undaunted Courage speaking about the Lewis and Clark expedition. One of the chapters talked about preparing for the expedition. Meriwether Lewis was meeting with President Thomas Jefferson. They were going to be going from St. Louis all the way to the Pacific Ocean to explore the new Louisiana Purchase that had been bought from Napoleon.

President Jefferson and Lewis were talking together about the expedition, how it would proceed up the Missouri River, what they would need to cross the Rocky Mountains and descend the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean and then return.

The team would have to do this as a self-contained unit and once the expedition left St. Louis, Lewis would be stuck with the decisions that he had made during the planning process. How many men would he need? With what skills? How big a boat? What design? What type of rifle, how much powder, how much lead? How many cooking pots, what tools? How much dry or salted rations could be carried? What medicines in what quantity? What scientific instruments would they need? How many fishing hooks? How much salt? How much tobacco and whiskey?

Think of all of that foresight and planning required to make the great unknown and perilous journey from St. Louis up eventually to the Pacific.

Possible Preaching Angle:

God has provided the equipment we would need for the journey to the new heaven and new earth, and he put everything that we would need for it in Scripture.

There's a Signpost Forest just outside of Watson Lake, Yukon. It was started in 1942 when a soldier named Carl K. Lindley was injured while working on the Alcan Highway. He was taken to the Army air station in Watson Lake to recuperate.

In those days a simple sign post pointed out the distances to various points along the highway. One of the signposts was damaged by a bulldozer. Lindley was ordered to repair the sign, and decided to personalize the job by adding a sign pointing towards his home town, Danville, Illinois, and giving the distance to it. Several other people added directions to their home towns, and the idea has been snowballing ever since.

Since those early days, tourists continued the tradition, and there are currently ( as of 2021) 80,000 signs from around the world. Now the Signpost Forest takes up a couple of acres, with huge new panels being constantly added, snaking through the trees. There are street signs, welcome signs, signatures on dinner plates, and license plates from around the world.

We all long for home, especially our heavenly home. Throughout life we encounter signposts that point us to our home in heaven. The blessings given to us by our heavenly Father such as family, friends, worship music, the laughter of a child, are all signposts that point toward home.

In his book, The Art of Prayer, Timothy Jones tells the story of his friend, Jeanie Hunter:

In … 1983, surgery to have a tumor removed from my ear, left a facial nerve severely damaged, causing paralysis and weakness on the left side of my face. My hearing was so affected that I had to wear a hearing aid. The nerve controlling taste was cut so that food tasted like wet cardboard. And my middle ear was injured, leaving a constant ringing. On top of all this, I was so dizzy I had to spend most of the day in bed or lying on the couch.

(In) 1987, someone from my church called and asked if I was going to attend the Wednesday morning service. ... I finally agreed. As I drove to the church, I could sense a voice saying, “This could be the last time you drive to the church sick.” I knew the medical community had done all it could. Could it be possible that Jesus would heal me?

[At the close of the service Jeanie went forward for prayer.] My prayer was “Lord, please either heal me or let me die. I just cannot live with this illness any longer.” When I opened my eyes, I saw I was bathed in light. Then from the middle of the light, God sent a washing of love that penetrated every part of my being. As I stood in the light, it was as though I could see 4-inch-tall letters that read, “YOU ARE HEALED.”

Suddenly I found my hearing aid on my lap. For the first time I was able to hear without it. The noise in my head and the dizziness vanished. Feeling in my extremities had returned. I could actually walk through a door without hitting the door frame. And taste! It came back in a little over a month, while I was licking envelopes in the office. That evening, as my daughter and I went up and down the aisles of the supermarket, I kept opening the packages as I threw them into the cart. I hadn't tasted food for four years, and I couldn't wait!

It was just another ordinary spring training game between the Atlanta Braves and the Pittsburgh Pirates—until a rogue bat flew into the stands, heading straight for a young boy. In a moment that has now been forever captured in a reporter's photo, the boy's father reached out his arm to block the bat from hitting his son's face. "I didn't have a lot of time to think," the father said in an interview with the Today show. "Once I realized it was headed for my son, I just did anything I could to block it and deflect it." Both father and son are doing just fine, with the boy calling that game—his first major league baseball experience—"amazing."

Possible Preaching Angle:

This father's intervention in a potentially disastrous situation was impressive, but it's just a tiny reflection of God the Father's love for his children ().

Source:

Bill Chappell, “Father And Son Discuss The Near Miss With That Flying Baseball Bat,” NPR (3-8-16); Scott Stump, “Meet the hero dad who saved his son from being hit by a flying baseball bat,” Today (3-8-16)

This year's presidential candidates might know you better than you know yourself. According to Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica, candidates' campaigns are utilizing consumer research data firms to learn exactly how to cater their advertising to specific lifestyles. Nix says that his company maintains between 4,000 and 5,000 data points on every single person registered to vote in the United States. These could be websites you have visited, cars you've shopped for, and even groceries you've purchased. All of these data points are then categorized by analytics firms and presented to presidential campaigns, who can target their advertising messaging to best fit the needs and desires of voters. The entire process of compiling such massive troves of data is an effort that has taken years, millions of dollars, and thousands of sophisticated algorithms. But it's worth it to candidates who want to convince voters that they can provide them with solutions to their needs.

Possible Preaching Angle:

It's funny-God tries to convince us of the same thing in Scripture: "Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds!" The only difference is that God has the credentials to back his promises up.

Lake Tahoe is the eighth deepest lake in the world. On July 4, 1875, two men discovered the deepest point in the lake to be 1645 feet by lowering a weighted champagne bottle on fishing line from the side of their boat. Following the invention of sonar, soundings by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed that depth. Lake Tahoe is so large that if the lake were tipped over, its contents would cover California in 14.5 inches of water. Tahoe could provide every person in the United States with 50 gallons of water per day for five years. The evaporation from Tahoe over the course of one year could supply a city the size of Los Angeles for five years. And Lake Tahoe is a small lake compared to Lake Superior (120 times as large) and the world's largest lake, the Caspian Sea (576 times as large).

Your use of water could never personally exhaust the limits of Lake Tahoe. But God has no limits. Whatever your need you can never exhaust God's supply.

In an issue of Christianity Today, a Muslim man describes his commitment to follow Isa al Masih, Jesus the Messiah. Suprisingly, a rather "ordinary" miracle caused this man to open his heart to Jesus. Here's how he described the miracle:

One night the only food my wife and I had was a small portion of macaroni. My wife prepared it very nicely. Then one of her friends knocked on the door. I told myself, The macaroni is not sufficient for even the two of us, so how will it be enough for three of us? But because we have no other custom, we opened the door, and she came in to eat with us.

While we were eating, the macaroni started to multiply; it became full in the bowl. I suspected that something was wrong with my eyes, so I started rubbing them. I thought maybe my wife hid some macaroni under the small table, so I checked, but there was nothing. My wife and I looked at each other, but because the guest was there we said nothing.

Afterward I lay down on the bed, and as I slept, Isa came to me and asked me, "Do you know who multiplied the macaroni?" I said, "I don't know." He said, "I am Isa al Masih [Jesus, the Messiah]. If you follow me, not only the macaroni but your life will be multiplied."

"Envy is resenting God's goodness to others and ignoring God's goodness to me."

"The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank. The converse of this proposition is also true … . The great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All goods look better when they look like gifts … . It is the highest and holiest of the paradoxes that the man who really knows he cannot pay his debt will be forever paying it … . He will be always throwing things away into a bottomless pit of unfathomable thanks."