Provision

and everything was going so well.... it was a good afternoon. One of those magical ones where every thing seems to go right.... well maybe not quite magical. I'm tired from too much work & not going to bed soon enough, so perhaps I wasn't as 'there' as I could be, but it was good. We went shopping. She found a top that she looked fantastic in & you could tell from her smile, from her glow, that she was happy with it & maybe, just maybe caught a glimpse of how beautiful she really is.Then we went for an experimental supper to a new restaurant where you sort of cooked your own food. And in the end, that was fun, too... neat experience, good conversation, good time.... and then came the drive home....

..and I got caught up in a rant... which, really, even that was going pretty well. The rant started with railing against Christmas music in the malls way too early & then it went to raving about the Christain radio stations "all christmas music, all the time" policies and it went on through about two or three other topics until I got on to talking about the church & money & the way that some places will preach hard that the average people need to 'just have faith' that God will provide their financial needs & then turn around & preach some sermon about how the average people need to give, give, give or the 'work of the Lord' will suffer & crumble without their financial support...

...and in the middle of a perfectly good rant, she asks, "So do you believe that? Do you believe that God will provide your needs?" and later, "What about the people who live in poverty and die of starvation? Does God provide for their needs, too?"

and I tried to answer, really I did. I tried to give some kind of an explanation that made sense... but it didn't... I talked about God's provision in my life & the places where I have had lack/want. i talked about Psalms 37 & the verse about having never seen the righteous begging bread & how the righteous have had to beg for bread. I talked about Jesus's comments to those gathered around after the 'sinful woman' poured perfume on His head that "the poor you will have with you always"... I talked about how poverty & lack gives us chances to show love & how sometimes the apparent 'lack' is sort of what we need to grow....

...and yeah, none of it made sense or came together, and in the end I was just flailing, hoping to find some shred of something that would bring some credibility back. Something that wouldn't make me look like a whack job, some crazy man indoctrinated by some cult... Mostly I was looking for something to bridge the gap... something to halt the spread of the ever deepening silence & the ever widening distance between us....

...and yeah, there wasn't anything. She went back to being cheerful & back to admiring her purchases. I went back to pretending to being happy, all the while feeling the distance crawl inside each of us again.... to feel the wedge between us one more time....

and yeah, i don't have good answers. Do I believe that God is good? Yes. Do I know what 'good' means? No. Do I believe that God provides? Yes. Do I believe that I have/will experience lack? Do I believe that God could walk me through poverty, despair, starvation, sickness, loneliness, heartbreak, cancer, death? Yes. How can I belive two 'opposite' things at once? I don't know. It's not logical, it doesn't fit a framework of anything I can find words & language to explain. I know there is great suffering on this planet. I know that I have tasted but a drop of all the pain that there is to be experienced here. I know that that drop has nearly killed me a couple of times. I know that I have winge-d & moaned to God about my life. I know that I have yelled at Him & thrown temper tantrums for not getting what I wanted. I know that I have felt the heartbreak of where I feel He's abandoned me & left me alone & where it feels like His face, His hand, His heart & His provision have been far from me. But in retrospect, looking back, I still say with the hymn writer, "for I know whatever befall me, Jesus does all things well"....