God Math and Gratitude

Uncertain and unstable economic times can highlight our desire for control and our materialism. We catch a glimpse of our self-reliance to “manage our futures.”

Even before the chaos in the current financial market, God began using finances to refine me. I’ve mentioned in posts before that our decision a couple years ago to stay home with my daughter required a big step of faith and submission of our budget to God’s will. As we walked into our new circumstances, we felt both fear and excitement. In our minds, we welcomed the opportunity to depend on God in the area of finances and be “forced” to consider our stewardship of our resources.

In reality, we still endured cycles of struggling. We could no longer spend money on what we just wanted without thinking about our budget. We had to choose not to do some things because we couldn’t afford them. Major, unexpected expenses sent us for a loop trying to figure out how to cover them.

And yet, God’s economy is different than our own. In those times of crisis, we’d pull our budget out again, reviewing every number to see what we could shave off, and realize in amazement that one plus one did not equal two.

One plus one equaled two and a half. Or sometimes three. Or even more.

God math.

Our needs were (and still are!) always covered. And – true to the very nature of God – we sometimes experienced abundance.

Even during the times we struggled with our faith and dependence upon God, taking matters into our own hands, he met our needs.

So what am I thankful for this season? That we serve a God who loves us down to the day to day details of our existence. That our God is sufficient to meet all our needs. He blesses us abundantly (even thought we may not always recognize it . . . but that’s another post). And that his grace and mercy does not depend on anything I do.

This post is a part of a marvelous Thanksgiving feast at LL Barkat’s Seedlings in Stone. Join the party over there for more dishes of encouragement and grace. If you’d like to join the celebration, write your own post and drop a comment by LL’s blog to let her know. As a token of thanks for joining us, L.L. will link to you in the Thanksgiving Celebration post (and Christianity Today and High Calling Blogs will link back to said post, so their readers can check out the full celebration).