Pay Day!

It is the first of the month and you are elated. It is PAY DAY! Now you can pay your bills and grab a Starbucks. You open your pay envelope and discover $27. That is it. It will be your entire salary until the first of next month. Could you do it?

On pay day, the activistas and I were discussing Elijah and the widow who had only a bit of oil and a bit of flour left in her house. She informed Elijah that she was going to cook it for herself and her son and then die. Elijah instructed her to go home and bake bread for him first. Would you do it?

How far are you willing to trust God in difficult circumstances? The activistas receive $27 a month in salary. Most are widowed with children in their care. It isn't that the cost of living in Dondo is less than the U.S. Food at the grocery store is high: a pound of butter $7.16; margarine $4.50; small can of tuna $2.12; small bag of apples $5.40; and for the epicurean appetite - 2 oz. of Tabasco sauce $5.00. Then there are the outlays of clothing, housing, schooling, transportation...the list goes on.

I asked the activistas if they could begin to put some of their $27 into a savings each month. After all, Proverbs 13:11 says putting money away little by little makes it grow. They looked at me like the widow must have looked at Elijah, "Is this the voice of reason?" An activista's eyes brightened and she laughed. At one time she had placed money faithfully for 30 months into a little box hidden in her mud house. After she lost her job she opened up her savings so she could use it in her time of need. She counted out 30 metacais, or in American dollars...$1.08. I didn't know whether to laugh with her or cry. We continued to discuss the value of following God's wisdom even with the tiniest amount of money. Like the widow, could they trust Him to provide even when He is asking the absurd?

I left my friends that day wondering what implausable plea God was asking of me...and perhaps you. Are we willing to respond so the oil and flour will never stop flowing?