Simple Gifts

Yesterday was a banner day. A truly amazing, "wow, God," kind of day. I was up late the night before, worrying about my finances, going over my bills and my bank account and trying to figure out how it was all going to work. I’ve experienced God’s amazing provision before – his  math that doesn’t make sense in any of the ways we usually do math, the money that seems to multiply miraculously and the dollars that stretch to cover more than they should by all normal accounting practices. But even so, I was still feeling the stress, and went to bed far too late to really get a good night’s sleep, and was stressed so I couldn’t really sleep, and woke up early, stressed, tried to go back to sleep and couldn’t, so I got up and made my breakfast and talked to my Father. My own father died in 1998, and he was not ever really someone I could count on, though he did miraculously help me once, something that I wrote about here in another post. I talked yesterday morning to my Father God – the only father I have ever known who will never let you down.

There’s a great book a friend gave me called "The Shack" by Wm. Paul Young, and in that book, the narrator’s wife calls God “Papa.” My own father I always called Dad, but after reading The Shack, I started calling God “Daddy,” something I never, ever, called my own father. In Romans 8:15, the Apostle Paul writes “You did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, "Abba, Father.” Abba is an Aramaic word that comes close to the American word Daddy. So yesterday morning I talked to my Daddy. I had been talking to him all the night before, and in the early morning when I couldn’t sleep, and while I made my coffee and my oatmeal, He told me to go to my bank and have a talk about what was going on with me financially and see what they would do. He didn’t send me to just any branch either. There are times when He's really specific, and this was one of those times. There are branches close to where I live, one just a block away and another a bit further than that where I know one of the bankers, but He told me to go to the branch much further away, in an area that is one of the more wealthy areas near where I live. My neighborhood is on the lower end of the financial scale, and this one is on the other end entirely. But even though it made no sense – wouldn’t they be much nicer if I went somewhere where they saw people with money problems every day? But God often doesn’t make sense, and that’s when we know it’s God, so I dressed a bit nicer than I usually do when I'm doing errands, and off I went.

When I got to the bank, it was really quiet – not a soul in the place except for the people who worked there. The woman who greeted me at the entrance directed me to go to speak with a banker, a very nice and very young man whose sister it turned out was studying to do the same kind of work that I do in nutrition – a friend of mine would say that was God winking at me, and it was, and I loved every minute of it. I explained my situation, and he looked at my account and then showed me what he thought would be a good option to change to. It gave me all of the same perks that I currently have, except there would be no minimum balance I’d have to maintain at all. I looked at him and at the information sheet he was showing me, and I must have looked stunned, because he said, “You look shocked that it was so easy.” I asked him just to be sure if there were any fees that I wasn’t seeing, and he said, no, and explained that the account I had for so many years was no longer an account they used, but they’d grandfathered it in for people who still wanted it. He said very simply, “This is just a better account for you.” And it was. It was as if it was tailor made for me – thank you Jesus, thank you Lord, thank you, Daddy.

I walked out of there stunned, and continued the rest of my day in shock, in a good way. I kept smiling and laughing at the silliest things. Later on I talked to a Pastor about connecting her church with another ministry that provides food to the community and shares their donations with other churches, and I told her my story. We both praised God together, and then she said that what I told her made her think of a passage of scripture, and she went on to quote from the same passage of scripture that I had written here for yesterday morning’s post. The Lord had spoken to me about Matthew 6:26, "Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" That section continues on to talk about the lilies of the field being clothed more beautifully than "Solomon in all his glory" and that we should not worry about what we will wear or eat or drink, "For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things."(Matthew 6:32). This is the passage she started to talk about, and when I told her that the Lord had given me the same thing the day before, I couldn’t stop laughing. Sometimes the Holy Spirit shows up that way – He’ll make you laugh and laugh and laugh for the joy of it. That chapter of Matthew is focused on feeding the poor, and helping those in need, and the Pastor had said that she could hear my heart when I was speaking to her and that is why she thought of that passage. Matthew 6:33 continues the thought with, "But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." The message He was giving me was clear - when we do what He asks us to do and reach out to other people with love, to help people in need in the ways that we can, He will bless us in the ways that we need.

On my way home, I noticed that my shoulder that has been hurting me with such pain for the past few months was completely free of pain. I had been shopping and was carrying bags that were heavy with clothing from the thrift stores - they had another bag sale this week and I'd found a beautiful camel colored cashmere coat for someone I love - and with produce from some of the markets that have great discounted bag sales of vegetables and fruit. I had been walking around all day for miles because the weather was so beautiful I had decided to go to lots of different places, and I had been carrying heavy bags the whole time but my neck and shoulder had no pain. I had been suddenly completely and miraculously healed. I have been trying to use an ointment I have for muscle pain that usually works, but it hasn’t worked this time. I carry heavy bags for the work that I do, and the strain is constant. Combined with the stress I’ve been under for these past months, the pain had gotten overwhelming at times. I finally broke down and emailed the man who is a healer – the one who I wrote about the other day in the post “Piropos.” I hadn’t wanted to bother him because he has enough responsibilities to deal with in his own life with people who are closer to him than I am, but the Lord said to go ahead and ask, so I asked him. He lives far away from me, over an ocean away, but he answered the call and now I’m healed. I keep moving my head in different directions and enjoying the freedom I finally have in my neck and shoulder again. When I say, “That’s amazing,” the Lord replies, “Why? I told you he could do it.”

The other day when I was on my way home, a song came into my spirit, the Shaker song “Simple Gifts. Aaron Copeland used it in Appalachian Spring, one of my favorite pieces of music. “'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free, 'tis the gift to come down where you ought to be.  And when we find ourselves in the place just right, it will be in the valley of love and delight.” For some reason that song made me think of a friend of mine who is an artist. We’ve never talked about that song or about Appalachian Spring, even though we have listened to lots of different music over the years together, so I don’t know if he even likes those two pieces of music, but he came into my mind all the same. I thought of the gifts he has given me over the years, the music he's given me that was full of love and thoughtful of what I would like, and art work that is lovely and simple and profound all at once. But more than that I thought of the gift of his friendship that is also full of love, thoughtful, lovely, simple and profound.

We met when we were both interns with a theater company, fresh out of college. He had just come from London, and I remember being very impressed with him and wanting to impress him. He was very beautiful looking, with long straight brown hair, very tall and gallant and elegant and refined. Like Hamlet I thought at the time, only not brooding and dark, but very light and full of life and love. We became friends and spent time over the years in so many different places in the city. He was my roommate for a short time if I remember correctly, or maybe he wasn’t – maybe it was just that we spent so much quality time together when we hung out together that it felt that way. We did live near each other at one time, on the same street, when I had a boyfriend I was living with, and he had a roommate at one point I could say I dated, but it was much less than that. His friendship lasted through it all, through different apartments and years and lives. He took me in and I slept on a mattress on the floor of his loft when I was leaving that boyfriend and had nowhere to go. He took me out to dinner and spent time with me, and let me cook in his kitchen – I love to cook so it was hard not having my own kitchen, and he let me use his as if it was my own, something that I don’t think I could do for anyone. It must have driven him crazy to have me there for so long, but he never showed it. He was always loving and kind and made me feel like it was no problem at all.

After I moved out of the city to where I live now, we didn’t see each other for a while, then one day I ran into him outside of the apartment he’d moved to. It was totally unexpected, but it felt like we’d just seen each other yesterday. The connection was still there, the love, the kindness, the simple but profound gift of friendship.

A friend of mine said to me the other day that she was impressed with the way I kept in touch with people I’ve known over the years. I thought about that when she said it, and it’s not so much that I keep in touch with everyone, but that I’ve had such deep friendships and have been blessed by some of the people I have known in such profound ways that the connection lingers even when people have moved or lives have changed in some way. There is an internet email that is forwarded around from time to time about people who come into your life for a reason, for a season and for something else I don’t remember now. I’ve definitely had people who have come into my life for a reason and some for only a season. But there are others who touch my life so deeply that it doesn’t matter how long the time is between our meeting, it doesn’t matter if they move to another country, when we run into each other on the street or call each other up one day, we’re right back where we were only better.

During the time I slept on my friend’s floor, it was probably the hardest time of my life at that point. But I remember it as being so full of love and light and life. “'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free, 'tis the gift to come down where you ought to be. And when we find ourselves in the place just right, it will be in the valley of love and delight.” Isaiah 58:10 says, “If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noon day.” My friend opening his heart and his home to me during that time of my life – and so many other times before and after – has given me the light of noon day even at the darkest of times. My prayer for him is that he would know that lightness all of the days of his life, and that he would know how much I treasure the not so simple gifts he has given me.

Blessings,

Jannie Susan