He Will Provide

By: Lauren Thomas

It was about 3 AM. I was in a hospital bed. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “it’s darkest before the dawn.” I thought I was living it, literally and metaphorically. I had given birth to my second child within the last 48 hours. And though everything had gone well, and everyone was healthy, I was in the middle of a lonely struggle. My baby was crying, and it was up to me to take care of him. Only, nothing I did would keep him from screaming his head off. I was confronted with fears: Fear that I would again suffer postpartum depression. Fear that I wasn’t enough as a mother. Fear that I didn’t have enough to offer this baby. Fear that I didn’t know how to take care of this baby.

 

Enter my night nurse. In the dark, she took one look at my tear-stained face and said “Honey, you need a snack.” A few minutes later, she returned to my room, arms full of snack food, which she promptly dropped in front of me. I grabbed a package of graham crackers and a to-go sized tub of peanut butter. After slathering that peanut butter on those graham crackers, I nearly inhaled them.

I immediately felt better. 

 

In that moment, I had a very spiritual realization. God is a God who provides. 

 

All of the fears, all the mental and emotional struggle, just melted away. I hadn’t realized that I was hungry. Or that my dramatic difficulties were rooted in a more basic need: food for energy!

 

But God knew what I needed: a knowing nurse, graham crackers, and peanut butter.

 

¹³ And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. ¹⁴ So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

Genesis 22:13-14 (ESV)

 

This passage is taken from the account of God providing a sacrifice for Abraham, after testing Abraham’s faith. The mountain in this account became symbolic of the Lord‘s provision. In the same way, peanut butter and graham crackers have become a reminder to me that the Lord will provide what I need. And do you know? The Lord did provide throughout that postpartum season. And the Lord has continued to provide what I have needed exactly when I have needed it. 

 

God is a God who provides.

 

Reflection: 

What is your "mountain of the Lord"? What is your peanut butter and graham crackers? Sometimes we need a physical reminder of a spiritual reality. 

If you don’t have a reminder of this spiritual truth, how could you memorialize it?