Rethinking Provident Living
On June 5th of this year (2023) our lives were upended when my husband, Ross, was in a serious car accident. He was T-boned by a Cadillac and his Honda Civic was no match. The impact broke most of his pelvic bones (The surgeon recently told him “You smoked your pelvis.”) as well as four ribs which resulted in a punctured and collapsed lung. I got to the hospital just as they were prepping him to re-inflate his lung. After two surgeries —one to repair the broken ribs and a second surgery to replace the left hip—he spent 11 days in critical care and then a month in a rehab facility.
Needless to say, this accident was not in our plans for this summer. There were days that there was so much to deal with—insurance, medical decisions, remodeling the bathroom and getting all the medical equipment we needed so he could come home as well as the day-to-day demands of running the household—that I hardly knew which end was up.
One day a friend asked me “Aren’t you glad you’re so involved in preparedness?” My first reaction was “No! How could you ever prepare for this?” But as I thought of it, I realized that I was actually functioning on a sort of “preparedness auto-pilot.” Having been so focused on Provident Living for so long, it had become second nature. My friend’s question helped me see how the principles of Provident Living got us through those very stressful weeks.
So really, what is provident living?
As I’ve often said, provident living isn’t about how many buckets of beans and gallons of water you have stored up. It’s being aware of all the abundance in our lives and setting aside a portion of that abundance for times of need.
It wasn’t beans and water that sustained us during those stressful weeks. It was God’s providence and His abundant grace.
When I didn’t have one more ounce of energy, God sent friends to help me clean my house before the County Tax Assessor’s scheduled “visit”. His providence was manifest in the friends who brought me lunch in the hospital while I sat with Ross. He answered the thousands of prayers offered on our behalf with an outpouring of grace.
The worst is over. Ross is home now and improving each day. Though he is slow and a bit unsteady, he is able to walk without a walker or cane. The rest of the internal damage is steadily healing. The doctors tell us that by the end of next summer he should be back to pretty close to normal.
Now that we are paying off a mountain of bills, all that extra food we stored up is helping us keep our grocery expenses down. The food storage and the helpful friends come to us from the same Source and sustain us, both body and soul.
Physical vs. spiritual/emotional preparedness
Many people try to make a distinction between physical preparedness (buckets of beans and cans of food) and spiritual or emotional preparedness (being grounded in scripture and guided by the Holy Spirit.) To me they are one and the same.
The books of Job and Ecclesiastes as well as many of the Psalms lament how fragile life is and how vulnerable we are to the evils of this world. At the same time these scriptures testify of how ready God is to protect us and supply us with all of our needs.
This cycle of provident living begins, like the story of Job, with the recognition of how precarious life is. Realizing that we have so little control over what happens in our life, we have two choices: either despair or turn to the One who is constant and faithful.
We are, all of us, dependent on God’s providence. Each breath we take, each meal we eat, each friendly smile or kindly hug has God as its source. And He is not stingy. He gives us more than we need, enough to sustain us both now and during times of famine, if, like Joseph in Egypt, we have put by the surplus of each day. I am mindful of all that comes from Him each time I buy extra food for my pantry or plant a garden. The extra cans of food I’ve stored, the gardens I’ve planted, the skills I’ve learned, all are my witness to God’s providence.
When you’re drowning
Have you heard the story of the drowning man who prays for God to save him? Along comes a rowboat and the man in the boat says “Here! Take my hand and get into the boat!” The drowning man responds “No, God will save me.” Eventually the water overtakes him and he drowns. When he gets to Heaven he asks God “Why didn’t you save me from drowning?” God responds “I sent you a rowboat and you refused it.”
How often do we fail to recognize all that God is sending us that will save us from the calamities of this world? When God gives us talents and skills, extra income, extra time in a day, health, modern conveniences, sends friends who cheer us and so forth, do we recognize that those are the things that will enable us to be prepared for a future crisis?
Time for Thanksgiving
After God’s outpouring, it is fitting to give thanks. Thanksgiving (the attitude, not necessarily just the holiday) is the axis of living providently; the point around which all our preparedness activities revolve. If I were to enumerate all the blessings and small miracles of the past six months, it would take days, more than can be told in one day of Thanksgiving. So, at the core of provident living is gratitude for each gift, large and small, that God bestows. As part of Provident Living, I will consistently work to make a portion of those gifts available to others, both now and in some unforeseen crisis.
Don’t wait
It’s not a question of “if” but “when”. Someday disaster will strike. Hopefully it will not be too major, but isn’t it always good to be prepared? To do otherwise is to disregard God’s abundance in the time before the crisis.
Start now to become daily aware of God’s abundance. Start today to put aside something to sustain you during a crisis. Make Provident Living such a central part of your thinking that when the disaster does strike, you can go on “preparedness autopilot”. Rest well in God’s providence, both has He helps you prepare for disaster and sustains you through times of need.
