Flour and Oil
Medical school is tough, y'all - especially the part where you're living off of a budgeted loan allocation for 6 months at a time.
Especially when the school-budgeted allocation doesn't account for boards fees.
Especially when the school-budgeted allocation doesn't fully cover travel and hotel expenses for away rotations.
Especially when the school-budgeted allocation doesn't account for dependents.
I won't lie. It's easy to get frustrated and jaded. Not all of us had the smooth, seamless track through school and can graduate before we're off our parents' insurance. Not all of us are single and sharing an apartment. Not all of us are budgeting for food for one and can Ebenezer Scrooge a meal plan from a penny shaving.
For that matter, not all of us have a working spouse. Not all of us have a family endowment or investment. Not all of us have scholarships.
In reality, most of us struggle financially. It's easy to become isolated, to stress about the finances and how far they'll stretch, to think we're the only ones in the hole, to think that we're stuck and unable to make it to the next month.
We're not alone.
Not only are we not alone in that there are thousands of medical students in the same situation, crying out in shared agony, but we are not alone in that there is a God who delights to provide and who meets needs. This is the God who knows how to give greater gifts than fathers who give their hungry children bread instead of scorpions and stones. This is the God who cherishes his final creation, man, more than the birds or the flowers and meets their needs accordingly. This is the God who provides flour and oil for a widow through the middle of a drought, because she obeyed and gave His prophet the last of her food.
This is the God who controls the universe, who shaped and ordered the entirety of creation down to the most infinitesimal quark in the neutron of the carbon of the molecule of the kinesin carrying a vesicle of neurotransmitters in the pathway from your retina to your occipital lobe all before you registered the meaning of the very words on this screen. To think that the God who did all this - the God of magnitude and scope - delights to care for the finest of his creation, especially those adopted as His children, makes me pause...
and consider.
Maybe it's time for me to rest in faith, to let the fears and anxieties go, to stop worrying about the rapidly spiralling bank account. Maybe it's time for me to consider the One who made me, who has brought me this far, and who has been faithful to provide throughout the ages. Maybe it's time to trust that He is God and that I need not worry about
flour and oil.
Especially when the school-budgeted allocation doesn't account for boards fees.
Especially when the school-budgeted allocation doesn't fully cover travel and hotel expenses for away rotations.
Especially when the school-budgeted allocation doesn't account for dependents.
I won't lie. It's easy to get frustrated and jaded. Not all of us had the smooth, seamless track through school and can graduate before we're off our parents' insurance. Not all of us are single and sharing an apartment. Not all of us are budgeting for food for one and can Ebenezer Scrooge a meal plan from a penny shaving.
For that matter, not all of us have a working spouse. Not all of us have a family endowment or investment. Not all of us have scholarships.
In reality, most of us struggle financially. It's easy to become isolated, to stress about the finances and how far they'll stretch, to think we're the only ones in the hole, to think that we're stuck and unable to make it to the next month.
We're not alone.
Not only are we not alone in that there are thousands of medical students in the same situation, crying out in shared agony, but we are not alone in that there is a God who delights to provide and who meets needs. This is the God who knows how to give greater gifts than fathers who give their hungry children bread instead of scorpions and stones. This is the God who cherishes his final creation, man, more than the birds or the flowers and meets their needs accordingly. This is the God who provides flour and oil for a widow through the middle of a drought, because she obeyed and gave His prophet the last of her food.
This is the God who controls the universe, who shaped and ordered the entirety of creation down to the most infinitesimal quark in the neutron of the carbon of the molecule of the kinesin carrying a vesicle of neurotransmitters in the pathway from your retina to your occipital lobe all before you registered the meaning of the very words on this screen. To think that the God who did all this - the God of magnitude and scope - delights to care for the finest of his creation, especially those adopted as His children, makes me pause...
and consider.
Maybe it's time for me to rest in faith, to let the fears and anxieties go, to stop worrying about the rapidly spiralling bank account. Maybe it's time for me to consider the One who made me, who has brought me this far, and who has been faithful to provide throughout the ages. Maybe it's time to trust that He is God and that I need not worry about
flour and oil.
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