"the cares of this life"

Yesterday morning I glanced at my copy of The Daily Light devotional so that I could say I at least looked at a bit of scripture that day. (The link takes you to the exact reading that comes up for June 3.)

The verse that caught my eye was this one:
"Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly." (Luke 21:34)

Of course, carousing and drunkenness are not necessarily my weaknesses, but being weighed down by the cares of this life? Yes, I can get caught in that.

As an aside, when I looked up a different version of this passage, the word used in place of "carousing" was actually "dissipation," an archaic word from the 15th century, but is the noun form of "dissipate". I know about feeling like my day, energy, and focus has completely "dissipated." And it's not anyone else's fault, so maybe it does apply to me more than I'd originally thought.

Back on track.

I appreciate that Jesus said that our hearts can be weighed down by caring about the "stuff" of life, just as much as other sins that can be detrimental to our souls. So yesterday morning I made the conscious choice to not be worried about "what we shall eat or what we shall wear, for our heavenly Father knows we have need of these things."

The providence of God is amazing. No sooner had I read that and put the baby down for a nap than I discovered that I'd missed a phone call from Sam. Since I had both hands free for the first time all morning, I called him right back.

"Well, they laid me off."

I have to confess, I had a kind of sick feeling in my stomach when he said that. However, as we talked, we both had faith rise in our hearts. We had been expecting this, since he has graduated and the internship is really only as long as he was in school. The really strange part about it was that they had offered him a job last week and gave him a few days to consider it, but before they asked him whether he wanted to take the job, they gave him a separation notice. That was pretty low. The job they'd offered him would have required 300 miles of commuting each day so it would not have been ideal at all, but ... well, I won't say anything more about it.

As strange as it sounds, we are encouraged this week. This is a very obviously closed door. Up until a week ago, this job was a very real possibility, albeit a sort of job that would end up going nowhere. Now it is not an option anymore, so Sam must look elsewhere. We are praying that they will give him a new separation letter saying that it was due to 'lack of work' so that he will be able to collect unemployment.

There have been a few people who have offered already to give Sam's resume to their companies. We are praying those contacts are solid and come back with job offers. We are also praying that the next job he gets will be something that is a significant step toward a career, that will allow him to be a parent and a husband, and that will meet our financial needs. We are also praying that it does not require a relocation, but if we must move, then we can do that, too.

No, we do not really know how we will pay our bills in the next couple of months. But we trust the Lord. He is our provider; a corporation is not our provider. Granted, we do hope that very soon a particular corporation will be God's instrument to provide a regular paycheck, though!