God's Provision!

I have had a garden for several years. It was small, but productive! Last year's drought drove the deer to my garden for food! All that work and no more garden! I was frustrated!

A little idea began to grow! I could build a garden where the deer couldn't get in! Problem was the expense for the materials! My husband has a fledgling business and I am a teacher! Never much extra money for projects...... I filed the idea away for a more financially productive year.

My gardening friends told me they were going to start seeds, did I want any!!! I stepped out and said, "Yes!", not knowing what I would do with the plants!! Winter drug on and my idea was stalled!

One day I was out feeding the goats and I noticed some unused fencing panels behind the goat shed. When I started moving the two I saw, more were under them, buried in the mud! I started dragging them to the area where I would want to put a garden in the future. I then found some left over metal panels from where the goat shed had been made.... discarded cinder blocks that a teacher had not wanted... old bee-hive boxes from our former business..... discarded fencing from various projects... and a super tall gate that we never figured out what we would do with! As I continued dragging things over I realized that there just might be enough materials to at least get started!!!

Spring break week finally arrived! (Thrilling to a teacher!) My husband, Mark, and I threw ourselves into the project! We measure and layed out the t-posts (had to purchase since we didn't have the long ones). Our neighbors came over with a hydraulic tool that hammered the posts into the ground. We put up fencing, cut and put metal panels, placed cinder blocks, bought dirt (another expense), and decorated!!

The funny/weird/wonderful thing was, WE HAD EXACTLY ENOUGH FENCING TO COMPLETE THE PERIMETER! God had provided all of the materials except the t-posts and dirt! Even my part of the plants came to $6!

As a Christian, I would not try to tell anyone that God always gives us what we want, because sometimes what we want is not His will. But I will say that the little/wonderful/unexpected blessings that He does give are a joy to my heart!

Matthew 6:25-34

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life^[a]?

²⁸ “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.