So there is no such thing as worldly security, but nor should we even necessarily expect or presume on material security as a gift from God. While he frequently gives us everything we need physically, there are times when he sees fit not to. What he provides instead is eternal security

That’s what my minister said during a sermon, and I instantly felt the relief that accompanies forehead-slapping “of course!” realizations.

It’s not like it was really news to me. I know this life is fleeting. Everything can change in a moment. The tumour turns cancerous. The home is robbed. The child walks behind a reversing car.

Finances have been a bit more precarious than my husband and I would like in the last few years. We’ve both been tempted to feel sorry for ourselves, especially in comparison to other families around us. But when I went home after that sermon, I sat on our donated couch and glanced around at our borrowed table and our gifted bookshelf and our competition-prize television and our side-of-the-road fan… and it occurred to me that we hadn’t had to buy a single stick of furniture in that room. Or our bedroom, our toddler’s room—any room. Somehow, when I hadn’t been paying attention, God had answered our prayers and gave us far more than our daily bread.

My praise of God following my pastor’s reminder that my present and future are in God’s constant control didn’t last very long before my heart swung in the opposite direction. All it took was completing our tax returns. Last year, we had received a large sum of money from the government that helped us balance our budget perfectly. It was unexpected, and I was amazed at how God provided perfectly. This year, when we were told that this time we actually owed the government, what did my ungrateful soul demand? “God, where’s my money???”

I had forgotten that the Lord is equally in control in both the times when he provides many material comforts and those when he tells us to make do. Paul says, in the context of finances, “God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:19). But the same apostle also describes his own situation at one point as “hunger and thirst… poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless” (1 Cor 4:11). What?

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