Cost of Living

 So help me if I have to listen to one more person being interviewed about how the cost of living crisis is affecting them I shall scream.  It's all so doom and gloom and never-ending and I'm beginning to feel myself being sucked in to the fatalism and fear-mongering.  But as I was driving home yesterday I suddenly felt myself getting angry.  I heard myself saying ' I am not in a cost of living crisis because God meets all my needs! '.  And He does.  As He meets all yours.  He always has done and He always will do.  Yes, I've had a few times in my life where there hasnt been much in the bank - but Ive never run out.  I've never been in debt ( apart from having a mortgage) and He has always faithfully provided work when it has been needed and other things too.   He isn't about to change - so I don't need to a) worry and b) get sucked into the panic of a world which doesn't know Him and therefore cant rely upon His faithful provision.  

As I was thinking these things another thought came to me.  And that is that there is a cost to living.  Its the cost of taking up my cross daily.  Mostly, for me anyway, this cost has nothing to do with being in material need.  The sacrifices I have made have been less about ' stuff' and more about situations and attitudes and emotional matters.  About doing what God requires rather than what I might prefer. Which I guess is what the Christian life boils down to in a nutshell.  Your sacrifices might have been of a more practical nature ( opting to buy the Lada rather than the Porsche 911 😂 ) but Im sure you have made plenty of spiritual ones too.  There is a cost to following Jesus and I suspect that as the days march on towards the end of the age those costs are going to get greater.  We are going to be more counter cultural, more offensive to those around us, less tolerated by society and more persecuted for our faith  I do sometimes look at my boys and wonder what their faith stories are going to be. And I remind myself of what I said about bravery the other day and trust that God will give them what they need for any occasion in which they might find themselves.

So in the coming days when you hear those words ' cost of living crisis'  just remember that you are NOT in crisis.   Your Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills.  The Psalmist says ' I have been young and now I am old, but I have never seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging bread'  God looks after us and meets ALL our needs.  Of course what we think we need and what we actually need might be two different things and perhaps in the coming weeks we will have to do a bit of adjusting and belt tightening and re-evaluating.  But we will be OK.  If we remain generous to others, faithful in tithing and giving, trusting in His provision and speaking words of hope into this increasingly hopeless world then we will see the goodness of God in the land of the living and may even see a miracle or two along the way.