Week Forty - The Provider

Beside the Well

            Being raised on a farm in Southwest Missouri, I grew up without a lot of class or experience in high society.  My only claim to fame is that I am a child of the King!

            As I read Charles Spurgeon’s devotions the other day, he took off on a description that delighted my soul.  Please allow me to share it with you.

            “What, indeed, would most men give if they could say, ‘The Queen herself carved [meat] for me, and was most anxious that I should be well supplied?’  But each believer has the Lord himself for his Provider.  He loads our table and fills our cup.  Providence is no other than God providing.  He measures out our joys, weighs our sorrows, appoints our labours, and selects our trials.  There is no morsel on the saint’s plate which is not of the Lord’s carving, unless he has been so foolish as to put forth his hand unto iniquity…Is it not delightful to know that our Father’s hand broke for us the bread which we have eaten this day: that the Savior’s own fingers mingled our cup and that every blessing has come direct from God’s own table?  A sacred perfume is on my raiment and in my chamber, for thou hast prepared both for me.  And this would be true if I wore rags and lay in a dungeon, in sore sickness. ‘I am poor and needy; yet the LORD thinketh upon me’ (Psalm 40:17) How can he be poor and needy of whom it is said that the LORD thinketh upon him?” (p 251)

            What more need I than to receive from the hand of my heavenly Father that which He would portion to me?  Indeed, He is my portion. (Lamentations 3:24)

            And, how beautiful and humbling is it to consider that our heavenly Father thinketh on us?  Truly, we could recite an abundance of Scriptures confirming his love and care.  Matthew 6:8 “…for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.”  Read on through Matthew 6 and Jesus assures us God will clothe us and feed us.  In Matthew 10 Jesus reveals the Father’s love saying we are of more value than many sparrows and even the hairs of our head are numbered.  Our Creator/Provider is intrinsically interested and involved in our lives.

            As Charles Spurgeon said, “Is it not delightful to know that our Father’s hand broke for us the bread which we have eaten this day: that the Savior’s own fingers mingled our cup and that every blessing has come direct from God’s own table?”

            In the end, it doesn’t matter where I grew up, or how much of a hillbilly I might still be.  For, under the hand of my Father, there is “a sacred perfume is on my raiment and in my chamber, for thou hast prepared both for me.”

Illustrations and Meditations or Flowers from a Puritan’s Garden by C.H. Spurgeon