One of the Hebrew names for God is Jehovah Jirah, which translates into Provider God.  I've struggled with this title for God for a couple of reasons.  First of all, I well remember the abuses of the God-wants-everyone-healthy-and-wealthy theology from the 1980's TV evangelists.  While this still exists today, with the likes of pseudo-pastor Joel Osteen, it was much more prevelent in the yuppy years.  TV preachers like Jim and Tammy Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and Robert Tilton taught the prosperity non-Gospel for years during this time until they were caught with prostitutes, arrested for financial mismanagement, and became the punchline for late night talk show comics. 

The second reason I've struggled with the title of Provider god is that, I don't usually need things often.  I've talked and interacted with homeless people, residents of third world dumps, and terminal patients, but I've never lacked for food, clothing and shelter myself.

All that aside, though, I have seen lately how God has been meeting our needs faithfully.  I use peacock feathers in our show, for example, and I lost my last one when it got stuck, quill tip first, in our church's ceiling.  Yeah, there's a story to how that happened, but that's for another blog.  It fell out of the ceiling on a Tuesday evening which is the night we have our kids' club ministry.  Some little boys found it first, and, well, it didn't make it.  Then, last week, on a whim, I pulled into a florist shop, and sure enough they had peacock feathers.  I'd thought I had checked everywhere, but now I know of a local shop where I can get them whenever I need to. 

Also recently, one of my CDs broke in half... I'm not sure why.  It contained "Why Don't You Look into Jesus" ( hear it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TliWDSLrYb8 ) by Larry Norman, which is my club routine music.  I knew I had this song on another CD, but I couldn't find it.  It turns out Naomi has it at college, and she'll be back home -with my CD -before the next time I plan on performing that routine.

Then there's my three ball routine.  For years I've been performing it to Mahalia Jackson's "When the Saints go Marching In".  This CD now has a scratch and is unusable.  I do still have the song on tape, but the quality is only okay.  Just yesterday, I was listening to the Staples Family version of "Pray On" and decided it was a perfect replacement for the previous song.    Honestly, it's a better song.  I love Mahalia, but the Staples version of "Pray On" is much rawer and traditional sounding.

Also, the other day I found a prop I had thought was lost for good.  What a relief!

None of these could be described as miraculous, but needs keep being met in ways I don't expect.  There have been times in the past when needs have been met in ways that did seem close to miraculous at the time.  I'll write more on those times soon.