God’s Provision Through the Generations

Dear Friends of Little Birdie Blessings - I hope you are faring well through these troubled times of Covid-19. I have asked my dear friend Moriah Chastney to be a guest on my blog today. She reflects below on her own personal account and stories told to her regarding God's provision through the generations. The two graphics below are free for personal use or sharing. 

And my God shall supply ALL your need according to His riches
in glory by Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:19

I remember visiting my Mamaw’s farm every year when I was young, and some of my happiest childhood memories consist of feeding her small herd of beef (err, pet) cattle, sleeping in too-big church camp t-shirts stored in a hall closet specially for us kids, and eating her homemade crumbly oatmeal bread sopped in freshly mashed strawberries. We spent hours roaming around the farm and loved exploring the old toys, tools, cars and random oddities scattered around the farm. To us, they weren’t clutter, they were our next adventure.

I grew up hearing stories, passed down from my mom, about my grandparents’ childhoods during The Great Depression. Mamaw was 7 years old when it began. She lived with her younger sister and parents on a farm in rural Arkansas. I remember hearing about the creative ways my great grandmother would find to make the occasional sweet treat when sugar was impossible to find and the neighbor boy who would “just happen” to show up when said treat was coming out of the oven. I remember hearing of the dresses made from flour sack material when there was no money left for clothes.

Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without!

A few miles down the road, my 17 year old grandfather lived with his mother on a homestead claim that his father had started to work before he died a few years earlier. They lived in a small house built originally for hired workers to live in, and kept food on the table by hiring sharecroppers to help with the farming. That very house sat at the end of Mamaw’s driveway, and I remember going down there with my mom as a kid, weaving our way through overgrown brambles and her holding us up so we could see through the broken windows to the past. In both of my grandparents’ childhoods, scarcity as a result of something far outside of their control was a common occurrence.

As an adult now, knowing the history of the Depression and gaining some life experience about what it’s like to be human and living in an uncertain world, the clutter of things kept “just in case” that we played with as kids makes sense to me. The last few weeks have held events that are out of our control and we’ve seen people (or we’ve BEEN the people) panic buying, hoarding, and hoping we’ll have enough. “Just a little more,” we think. “Then we’ll be ____ (insert applicable security adjective). But if our hope is in our own ability to provide, when will we ever have enough? I think the answer is never. If we rely on our own ability to meet our needs, it will never feel like enough because deep down we recognize the frailty of our own capabilities and understand that in an instant, everything we’ve built for ourselves could be wiped out.

But we know the One who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, who calms wind and waves, who causes rulers to rise and fall, who feeds the birds and gives life to flowers just because. Over and over, we see in scripture how God provides for His people. A ram in the bushes for Isaac. Manna, quail, and water from a rock for the Israelites. An earthquake for Peter. Someone to explain scripture for the Eunuch. God knows what we need, when we need it, and He will provide it. It might not look like what we think it will or what we think it should, but He does not fail to provide.

Moriah lives with her husband Jon in New Hampshire
They are pictured here on her Grandparent's creek land in Arkansas

You can find Moriah on Instagram here:
instagram.com/moriah_chastney/