God Knows What's Coming

And I'm glad I don't.

Providence is a word that came to my mind frequently in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. There were innumerable ways where I could see that God had provided something my husband and I or a church or community member needed far ahead of the time we actually needed it.

In the hazy days that followed the loss of power and in between trying to figure out how to bathe, cook, and keep two freezers full of food from defrosting, I thought about this a lot. I thought about God’s provision and the foreknowledge necessary to accomplish all of that…and I thought about how glad I was to have been spared that foreknowledge.

I am a soul which has often and will probably continue to fight my main character flaw which is anxiety. I hate uncertainty. I want to know when the current trial will be over so I can make other plans. I like to have a plan because I like to feel in control. This is a form of pride, of course. I continue to put it to death with Christ’s assistance every time it raises its stomach-churning head.

But as I experienced the events of last week, I don’t think I have ever been so grateful that I didn’t know many days without any power were on the way! This, I hope, means that my sanctification is progressing, however slowly this poor soul cooperates with that process.

So, allow me to tell you a specific way God provided for our needs and our neighbor’s needs before any of us knew we’d have a specific need at all.

As you know from previous pieces here, my husband has been getting into the high-powered model rocketry business. He travels to model rocket launches around the country and sells motors, kits and parts to those who attend these launches. He has a utility trailer full of inventory that requires a truck or similar vehicle to pull it. We didn’t have one and so we began praying that God would help us find one at a reasonable price as it wasn’t feasible or fair to continue borrowing folks’ trucks for this purpose.

Jonathon went hunting on Facebook marketplace for truck listings under a deadline as the next big launch was two weeks away. A tall ask in this economic environment to be sure. Even used vehicles are ridiculously expensive right now. To shorten a long story, God provided financing and a truck with good mileage and an excellent price about an hour away from us. We drove down to the Greenville area, took it for a spin and bought it. Hooray! We had a truck for the next launch. We thought.

The following week, Jonathon informed me that Hurricane Helene would likely affect us. This is highly unusual. Hurricanes never affect us in our part of Upstate SC. But according to the weather reports the wind gusts were supposed to be epic. It still just didn’t sink in, though. How could it? We’d never experienced a hurricane. Jonathon still planned to attend the SC launch on Saturday.

Though I do tend to be anxious, I also tend to sleep through major weather events. I have no idea why. Bad weather simply doesn’t alarm me. Everything else alarms me, just not tornadoes, falling trees, hurricanes, high winds or flooding. So, other than waking momentarily around 6:00 AM to wind whistling and rattling our sturdy brick house and the power going out, then rolling over and falling asleep again; I missed the entire thing.

It took a while for the reality of our situation and the situation of the entire Appalachian region to sink in. I figured the power would be out for a day, maybe two. But then we drove back roads to our friends’ house with a slick generator for some coffee and breakfast, and I quickly realized the damage I was seeing everywhere was like nothing I had ever seen in all my thirty-nine years of life (and compared to NC and TN, our situation was mild) and it was going to take a long time for anything to get anywhere close to normal. I have never seen so many power poles snapped in half, trees on houses, trees laid over like giants had picked them and dropped them on their sides, power lines on the ground, trees resting on power lines, creeks about to overflow their banks…it was something.

All launches were canceled. (The one Jonathon was going to attend in Florida on Saturday last week, also got canceled due to Milton!)

I thought, “Well, I guess there was no hurry to get that truck after all.”

But God knew we’d need it.

On Friday, our pastor went to our church fellowship building and found a couple inches of standing water inside. Have you ever tried to clean up two inches of standing water in a dark building without any way to turn on some lights, run a shop vac, or run fans to dry stuff off? No? Neither have I. So, Jonathon, our pastor and his daughter and few others did their very best, but it was still a sloppy, rapidly turning musty mess in there despite their best efforts.

My sister-in-law, by another stroke of God’s providence, got her hands on a nice generator when demand for generators was through the roof. Once her and my mother-in-law’s power came back on, she loaned it to us. It was really big and really heavy and bulky.

But it just so happened, we had a dandy pick up truck now, and picking it up and bringing it home was a breeze. That pick up truck went all over Anderson the next few days, transporting the same generator to the church so the clean up operation could be completed before mold started growing. Then it went to a church couple’s house to haul debris from their fallen trees. Then it went to another church couple’s house for another tree clean up operation.

We have yet to use this truck for the purpose we bought it. Instead, it’s been used for needs and jobs we had no clue were on the way. But God knew what was coming and He gave us what we needed right when we needed it.

Isn’t that amazing? I am writing about this because you probably need to hear it and I need to remember it. I need to remember that God has promised to take care of us and He can because He knows the end from the beginning and absolutely nothing takes Him by surprise. We can only react to what’s thrown our way, but He always knows what’s coming, and so He provides.

It’s very tempting to want to peer into the future, to get a little of that foreknowledge so we can feel more in control, more prepared, less helpless. The entire world of the occult is devoted to fulfilling that desire and God forbids it. I dare say, it isn’t because He’s holding out on us, but because He’s protecting us.

He is God, and so His mind is eminently capable of holding all of that knowledge without bursting. But we are not God, and it would crush us.

Participate in a little thought exercise with me for a moment.

Imagine you are ten years old, walking into a room and a bunch of people pop out of their hiding places and yell, “Happy Birthday!” This happened to me once, and it was such a fun birthday full of good food, friends, little presents. There is not a single thing that I remember about that day that wasn’t happy.

Now, think back throughout your life to every trial, to every illness, every car accident, every heartbreak, every loss, every disappointment and every pain.

Now imagine you know that all of those things sprinkled in among the pleasant things were waiting for you in your future on the happiest day of your childhood. Would you look forward to the happy things, in spite of knowing that your dog was going to die when you reached the age of seventeen? Would that happy day be happy anymore?

Of course it wouldn’t. You’d be bracing for impact, jumping at every shadow, mitigating, running and avoiding for the rest of your days.

To be fair, a lot of us do that anyway, without knowing the future. Think of the shadow of yourself you would become if you knew it all.

No. You don’t want foreknowledge. And there’s no need of it! God knows it and He provides what’s necessary when it’s necessary. For each heartache, grace. For each physical need, provision. For each medical problem, an answer.

Rest in that. Live in this moment, in this day, and leave the future to God.

This is the day that the Lord hath made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.

And now, I will close by singing one of my favorite hymns about God’s provision, “My Shepherd Shall Supply My Need.” You can hear it by scrolling up to the top and hitting the play button on the embedded audio. Lyrics are below:

My shep­herd will sup­ply my need:
Jehovah is His name;
In pas­tures fresh He makes me feed,
Beside the liv­ing stream.
He brings my wan­der­ing spir­it back
When I for­sake His ways,
And leads me, for His mer­cy’s sake,
In paths of truth and grace.

When I walk through the shades of death
Thy pre­sence is my stay;
One word of Thy sup­port­ing breath
Drives all my fears away.
Thy hand in sight of all my foes,
Doth still my ta­ble spread;
My cup with bless­ings ov­er­flows,
Thine oil anoints my head.

The sure pro­vi­sions of my God
Attend me all my days;
O may Thy house be mine abode,
And all my work be praise!
There would I find a set­tled rest,
While oth­ers go and come;
No more a stran­ger, nor a guest,
But like a child at home. ~ Isaac Watts

That’s all for now. Until next time, folks…

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