I’m sitting at the end of the day hearing experts talk about the Dow-Jones dive by 419 points.  Owning stocks is no longer a priority of the super-rich.  Like most other folks today, part of what I will one day be living on is being juggled by the stock market.  

Sitting and watching with a vested interest, I understand several things.  First, my investments are in many different stocks, not just the 30 stocks that represent those bought and sold in the Dow Jones sampling.  It could be that the stocks I own were not hit as hard as some others were.  Second, while I may lose some money on stocks that were bought when the market was at its peak, I will make money when I purchase stocks when the market has lost 400 points.

As I listened to the description of today’s wild ride, I was reminded of a lesson, I learned many years ago.  As a young wife and mother, I decided that I’d store dried beans in case there was a food shortage in the future.  Each week I’d buy several pounds of different kinds of dried beans and peas.  They seemed safe enough, encased in their sturdy plastic bags.  

I knew nothing about storage of food in the semi-tropical environment of Florida.  Naively, I stacked my private bean stash in a cabinet in our hall that my husband has made.  It was a decorative piece of his own design that kept the storage items hidden from view.  

One day in the middle of the summer when I returned from running some errands,  I was appalled to find the entire wall over the storage cabinet covered with something black.  As I approached the wall, I realized it was crawling with small bugs.  I jumped in to my car, raced to the store and purchased a bug spray.  After taking care of most of the creepy crawlers, I called our commercial bug man.  As I cleaned out the cabinet that held my beans, I saw that in the Florida heat and humidity the beans had molded and rotted.

Clearly, the Lord spoke to my heart, in a patient but parental tone, “Linda, when you need beans, I can supply you with beans.”  He reminded me of the daily supply of manna that he supernaturally supplied the children of Israel as they wandered through wilderness places.  

Understand, I don’t believe that God means for us to never prepare.  I don’t see that in the Scriptures.  What I do see is that God will provide for us when we do the best we can and there are circumstances for which we were not able to prepare.  I also know that our needs are different from our wants.  

Markets will vacillate.  Beans in Florida will mold, sour and may even get bugs.  But God is ready to help, nurture and provide.  We are abundantly blessed.  I am abundantly blessed.