Faith?

I was sitting here on the couch feeling a little discouraged when I looked up and my eye caught on the picture that Ken and I bought together for Christmas. It is a mountain goat in the middle of leaping from one precipice to another over a seemingly bottomless chasm. You don’t know if he’ll make it or not. The picture is entitled “Faith”. It is a good reminder just at the moment.

You see, Ken and I are trying to get our own truck on the road (he’s a log truck driver). We have been working on this pretty much since we got married. We finally found a truck in our price range and worked out a deal and brought her home and Ken has been fixing her up since then. Unfortunately, just before we were ready to launch out on our own Ken got laid off. Pros side of that is that we get unemployment. Cons side is that that is about half of what he was making and without those last couple of paychecks we didn’t really have the money to finish up the last few details we needed to on the truck. So, for the last six weeks we have been trying to find ways to do that creatively. We’ve done pretty good and were all set to start a new job this week, today actually.

And then Saturday happened. Ken went out to finish up a couple of things and double checked the lights and they wouldn’t work. Eventually he opened up the dashboard to see if it was a faulty wire. It was. A whole bunch of them. A rat’s nest really. Literally. A rat/mouse had made a home behind the dash and in addition to packing it full of paper and other nesting materials had chewed up any wires that were “inconvenient”. Not sure how the lights and other instruments managed to work as long as they did, but they don’t work now. So, Ken spent today and who knows how many more days rewiring the whole truck.

This is one of many things that have happened to slow down our progress with this truck. And it is hard to wait on God when it seems so urgent (after all, at this rate we won’t get our first paycheck until about the time the baby is due); but then you look up and your eye catches a picture about faith…

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:25-34