Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Seriously

It wasn't ten minutes after I made the last post that I wrote something like this one. But Blogger has been freezing up on me and I forgot that it never posted. Which is funny again, in its own way. Though the post also didn't save, so I'm going from scratch again and may lose it--again.

So, I've been questioning God and provision and tithing and giving and wondering and wondering and wondering.

See, we did taxes recently. (Don't ask, business owners and we didn't owe.) And when we add up our giving it works out well over the 10% range. So, considering things are ALWAYS tight I began to ask friends how they figure their "tithe." Does the tithe (in this reference I'm just calling 10% tithe and I know that true giving and tithing etc according to OT is closer to 30% and I don't want to get into that debate, so let's don't okay?) have to go to your church or do Christian organizations count? Etc, etc. I've tossed this one around now for a couple weeks. It has really kind of shut me down.

So on Monday my husband had to work from home because we only had one working vehicle and I had to take the kids to school and pick them up and everything is too far away to even consider walking. Got that? Meanwhile, Hubs feels like he practically has a free day (hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!) and takes "off" early to go get glasses which he has needed for a decade. Hi parents got tired of looking at his old glasses and bought him a gift certificate for his birthday--SIX MONTHS AGO. Anyway, I had a coupon to the place and was trying to get myself a pair of glasses out of the deal also (didn't happen). But he did spend less than the certificate because of the coupon and they gave him cash back. (Provision number 1--we needed cash.)

Meanwhile, Hubs called a friend of ours who specializes in fixing broken and hopeless vehicles in the housecall method (read: didn't have to have it towed). He not only fixed out van for a fraction of the cost of the shop, he told us about a certain recall that will fix our cruise control for free. Not a necessity, but nice nonetheless. (provision number 2 and 3: Still up since we used the cash plus free fix of cruise).

And yesterday morning my dentist got Princess in to fill a cavity that she's been complaining about--and didn't charge us. Now he did the original filling that didn't stay, but I still expected to pay something. (Provision number 4).

So, I don't know how long we get to ride this gravy train,but I'm going to keep paying attention. How many of these things happen to me everyday that I've missed? Or have they stepped up because I'm questioning giving and provision? I know that God specifically says to test him on this and that we will receive "pressed down, shaken together and running over." So help me, I needed this lesson this month.

3 comments:

Melanie Dickerson said...

Hey, Jamie! That is really cool. Isn't God awesome? I'm gonna go back and read it again, cause I need some insight. We need a new roof, and our debt is big enough as it is. We wouldn't need a new roof if our builder had put the roof on correctly, but we won't go there.

kpjara said...

I love how God does these little things almost more than the big things...cause we have to pay attention or we forget who is the supplier of them all!

Cool to record them this way!

Julie Carobini said...

Keep the faith, J! (And hope you get new glasses soon--teehee)