Consider the Lilies of the Field

Life is good.  I'm sitting on my front porch on a bench my father-in-law gave us.  I'm typing this on a laptop my work allows me to use via wireless internet, courtesy of a router my friend is loaning us. I'm drinking diet Dr. Pepper caffeine free that a thoughtful friend gave me for my birthday. All this under a blue sky on clear the Lord gave me.


I feel a spirit of abundance, of bounty and peace in my life. But this feeling is not linked to my bank account, nor does it grow from a lack of troubles and stress. To the contrary.

It might shock you to find out that middle school drama and music teachers are not quite as highly paid as some other professions (although, my employer is very generous).  It might further shock you to know that having five kids makes it hard to get by some times.  We're not in danger of starving or of being homeless, but some of the niceties and assumptions of most middle class families are usually beyond our reach. 

I'm not complaining--in fact, I think it's actually been a net positive for us. Yes, I feel bad telling my daughter we can't afford a cell phone when all her friends have them.  Yes, I wish we could give our kids braces and possibly even their own rooms.  But we can't.  And they'll be fine. 

You see, we're on the Lilies of the Field/Fowls of the Air plan.  I work as hard as I can and we do the best we can with what we have--and then the Lord provides the rest. 

It's actually a great plan. Obviously, it doesn't replace personal effort. It magnifies it. It's the temporal expression of the spiritual truth, We are saved by grace after all we can do."

Being a Lily of the Field means that if you are patient and calm, if you work hard, you will have the things you need, and, even some of the things you don't need, but really want. 

For example, we're all pretty darned excited because we got high speed last week.  Hitherto, we've been doing dial-up because that's what we could afford. On a computer that was about ten years old, also what we could afford. 

Then our computer died. Just stopped. We wore that pore thing out. A little bonus for a job Mere did allowed us to get a new (but modest) one.  Now, my son is doing an online physics class (just what I would have done in high school if the internet had been invented back then!!!!) and we had to get the high speed stuff.  We were blessed to find a great deal, which costs us very little.  Then, a friend let me use his wireless router, which was super nice.  So, here we are in the digital age. 


Yes, we're a long way behind everyone, but it hasn't really hurt us or caused any lasting problems.  In fact, to the contrary, it might be that we are so excited at finally getting it that it's more fun than it would have been otherwise.


We have what we want and we're happy with it.  That is part of being a Lily of the Field.