Tags
bible, Biblical Truth, Christ Centered Devotionals, Christian Poetry, christianity, faith, god, Inpirational, Inspirational, jesus, Royally Redeemed
Dear Reader,
Have you ever been overwhelmed by the provision of God? Not the idea of it, but the thing itself arriving when the jar was low, the day already spoken for, the map still saying sand. A morning portion. A meal that outlasted the worry. Rain on a field you had already given up.
This poem is a record of that habit. It keeps to an older measure, the heroic couplet, because provision often comes in pairs: enough, and then enough again. The figures are mostly the old ones—manna, ravens, the jar, the lilies, the later rain—not because the present is empty, but because those stories already know the shape of what still happens.If you have been carried that way, you will recognize the portions.
If you are in the stretch before the morning, the poem is not an argument. It is a place to set the empty cup and wait for the hand that still sets the table.
—the poet
Matthew 6:28–30, in the King James Version:
**And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
Before the field is broken by the hand,the cloud is loaded and the season planned.He sends the rain the way a house sends bread,and wakes the seed that lay as good as dead.The desert, which has nothing of its own,finds in the morning what the night had sown:a thin white covering no sickle cut,enough to answer hunger, not to glut.What yesterday could save will fail by noon;the faithfulness is measured to the sun.The ravens find the man no road can reach,and leave their portion, and return to eachtheir ordinary sky. They do not knowthe name they carry, only where to go.A widow’s jar, drawn down almost to dust,will not admit that this must be the last.The flask keeps pace with what the cooking needs;the flame continues after worry pleads.What holds here is not wealth laid up in grain,but oil that answers oil, and meal that answers meal.See how the lilies take their cloth and wearwhat no one wove, and finer than a king could bear.The sparrow does not plant or bind or keep,and still is fed, and still is not too cheapto count. He dresses grass that burns to smoke,and fills the throat that has no word it spoke.If field and bird are answered without speech,what finer need is set beyond His reach?The table laid in front of those who hateis not a show of surplus, but of state.The later rain arrives when mouths are dry,and barns that stood wide open crowd the sky.A river breaks where every map said sand;the rock, once struck, becomes a watered land.He leads beside the streams that bring men back,and spreads a pasture where the ground was black.The cup is not a measure, but a tide;it climbs the rim, and does not drop, and does not hide.What we call extra, heaven counts as due—the faithfulness that keeps, and starts anew.
