Why We Need: Provision
“I was anxious about replenishing our small stock of provisions.” Gandalf the Grey
Our college years are full of ill-advised misadventures, but one particular such folly came up recently while reminiscing with a friend. Someone in our crew “planned” a half-day canoe outing and rallied a dozen or so of us for the excursion. Some eleven hours or so after shoving off, we at last pulled the canoes out of the water—in the dark—and the disaster came to a muddy yet merciful end.
We were beset by problems from the beginning, and waylaid by unexpected predicaments around every bend, all of which could largely be attributed to the lack of foresight of a group of twenty-year-olds with not yet fully formed prefrontal cortexes. Research on river conditions? “Nah, it’s all good”. Check of the forecast? “We’ll be fine”. Pack sufficient food and water? “We’ll be done by lunch”.
Once Murphy’s Law kicked in, we were hurtin’, and my most vivid memory of the day was finding some candy on the muddy bottom of one of the canoes near the end of the odyssey, at which point we were completely famished. You would have thought those few pieces of Starburst were each a filet mignon the way we fought over them. I can still remember the satisfaction of downing that dirty, orange square of sugar…and I don’t even like orange-flavored sweets.
For many of us, life often feels a lot like that disaster of a day trip.
We’re accustomed to the wet, muddy discomfort of navigating through this unforgiving world, bumping up against unforeseen rapids and regularly getting overturned, all the while experiencing a constant hunger and thirst for rations that seem too skimpy, too infrequent, too uncertain to satisfy our longings for “enough”.
Indeed, it might be the perfect metaphor for this mortal life, with its constant anxiety of what may lie in wait around the next bend while facing the scarcity of having only a small canoe to stow meager provisions that never seem sufficient to offer us a sense of security and restfulness.
It’s hard for us to even imagine existing without that sense of scarcity; even the wise wizards of our fantasy realms are ever-anxious about the small stock of our supplies and consumed with care about procuring the next round. Like Gandalf in the quote above, we are caught in the clutch of constant concern about the scarcity of the money, acclaim, recognition, respect, emotional support, psychological peace, physical health, and social status we think we need to make it through the journey.
Yet into that perceived reality steps the Immortal One, a good Father who not only created us and all that we require, but provides to us what we need, when we need it, how we need it, and in the measure we need it. His provisions never fail, which is why he is called Jehovah-jireh, “the Lord will provide”—and even more literally (and encouragingly), “the Lord sees and will see to it”.
Sight, it turns out, is what provisions are all about. From a Latin root meaning “to see ahead”, provisions are literally foresight made tangible in the form of people, places, things that are necessary to our life and growth. They have been provided beforehand, for such a time as this. Because he is a God who sees.
He sees his sons, and sees to it—in his wisdom, his patience, his love, his compassion—that they have what they need when it is needed. He is a provider by nature, and no matter how much we project onto him our own nervous neediness or the stern stinginess of our earthly father-figures, he sees us and is on time with what we need, right now. Not what we want for tomorrow. What we need for today.
Like the morning dew, each blade of grass receiving its own drop to nourish it for the day, his provisions are new every morning. Daily bread, necessary for today but rotten and useless if hoarded until tomorrow. Why? Because he sees ahead, and has already provided the manna we’ll need then.
So that his sons will grow in their trust of him today.
“When the dew fell upon the camp in the night, the manna fell with it.” Numbers 11:9