This is from the book God\u2019s Smuggler by Brother Andrew.<\/p>\n
Despite everything that had happened I was still a novice in this whole business of God\u2019s bountiful care.\u00a0 I still depended on the isolated miracle, the emergency dispensation to get me out of one spot or another, instead of leaning back in the arms of a Father Who had more than enough and to spare.<\/p>\n
Back home there were several new expenses, the biggest of which was the arrival of a second baby.\u00a0 Just a year after Joppie was born, Mark Peter came to join our household.\u00a0 We started buying less meat in the market, depending a little more one the vegetables from our garden.<\/p>\n
This was no hardship, for we loved vegetables.\u00a0 What we did not realise, though, was that it was part of a whole mental set, an \u2018attitude of lack\u2019, into which we had slipped.<\/p>\n
The error came to my attention through the words of a lady I never met.<\/p>\n
One day we received, through our mail a rather large gift, the equivalent of about forty dollars.\u00a0 Attached to the cheque was a note from the donor saying, \u201cDear Brother Andrew: This is to be used for your own personal needs.\u00a0 It is not<\/i> to go to the work! Use it in Christ\u2019s love.\u201d<\/p>\n
I was touched by this thought.\u00a0 We had received personal gifts from friends, but this was the first time a stranger a total stranger had ever made such a stipulation.\u00a0 Instead of putting her note at the bottom of the pile of unanswered mail\u2014three months high at that point\u2014I sat down and pecked out a thankyou note that very day.\u00a0 I told her we we especially appreciated the note, because we were very scrupulous about: all donations went into the work unless they were specifically marked otherwise.\u00a0 Even our clothing, I told her, came out of the refugee bins to save money.<\/p>\n
Well, I have wished often that I had saved the letter that this good lady shot back.\u00a0 She began by reminding me of the scriptural injunction that the ox grinding the corn must not be kept from enjoying the grain.\u00a0 Did I think God felt less about His human workers?\u00a0 Hadn\u2019t I better examine myself to be sure I was not nursing a Sacrificial Spirit?\u00a0 Wasn\u2019t I claiming to depend upon God, but living as if my needs would be met by my own scrimping?\u00a0 I remember her close.\u00a0 \u201cGod will send you what your family needs and what your work needs too.\u201d\u00a0 I gave the letter a long and prayerful reading.\u00a0 Could she be right?\u00a0 Was I really living in an atmosphere of want that was most un-Christian?<\/p>\n
About this time, Corrie and I were invited out to dinner.\u00a0 The time came to leave, and Corrie had not appeared.\u00a0 I went up to our room and found her still in her bathrobe.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have nothing to wear,\u201d she said in a very small voice.<\/p>\n
I started to laugh: wasn\u2019t this what women always said?\u00a0 \u00a0And then I saw the tears in her eyes.\u00a0 Silently I began to look over her wardrobe myself.\u00a0 Warm dresses.\u00a0 Serviceable ones\u2014at least with Corrie\u2019s meticulous mending they\u2019d been made serviceable.\u00a0 But somehow the clothes she had salvaged from the refugee room had not managed to include anything pretty.<\/p>\n
And suddenly I saw that this was part of a whole pattern of poverty into which we had fallen, a dark, brooding, pinched attitude that hardly went with the Christ of the open heart that we were preaching to others.<\/p>\n
So we determined to change.\u00a0 We still lived frugally, and always would, partly because both of us were raised that way and wouldn\u2019t know how else to act.\u00a0 But at the same time we learned to take joy in the physical things that God provided.\u00a0 Corrie bought some dresses.\u00a0 We went ahead with tearing down a wall so that she could walk directly from the house to the kitchen.\u00a0 And when our third baby, Paul Dennis, arrived\u2014again just one year after the second\u2014we actually went out and bought him some clothes.\u00a0 And I can\u2019t say that he turned out any the worse for having passed his first days in clothes that still had store labels in them.<\/p>\n
Funny how long it took us to learn the simple fact that God really is a Father, as displeased with a cramped, niggardly attitude of lack as with its opposite failing of acquisitiveness.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is from the book God\u2019s Smuggler by Brother Andrew. Despite everything that had happened I was still a novice in this whole business of God\u2019s bountiful care.\u00a0 I still depended on the isolated miracle, the emergency dispensation to get me out of one spot or another, instead of leaning back in the arms of … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[20,10,8],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/edmonton-adventist.org.au\/wpcontent\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}