Give us This Day

Just-in-Time Provision
I’ve posted before (here and here, for example) about my dear friend Elizabeth and her young son John. They face many challenges as they reestablish their lives far, far away from us. They have been guests of friends in their new community, but Elizabeth has located an apartment and they are eagerly planning to move into their own place in a few weeks. Having left all their belongings behind when they moved, she is struggling to equip their new apartment.

Earlier in the week she sent me this note:

John had very bad asthma since yesterday. I used the medicines we had. Through the night he got worse and I ran out of medicines. In the morning he could not go to school. I had to call in sick (12 people got fired last week). I thought: Maybe we don’t need to pay for the doc’s visit, I can just ask for a refill. We got there, the doc was an ashtma specialist. He said he would be John’s doc for now on. He started checking the medicines I used, the frequency, etc. He did an emergency medication right away, as John was laboring to breathe. Afterwards, he gave me the prescriptions and I asked if by any chance we could use any generics as we did not have insurance that covered medication. He got me a FREE…F-R-E-E refill of his medication and I had to pay for the co-pay only.

On the way back home, adding numbers in my head, as only single moms can do, I thought, well we can move all the boxes, and spend couple more days over my friend’s house to delay the moving and turning on the electricity. The electric co. here is asking an absurd amount of money for deposit.

As we are driving a block away from home, I saw a twin matress and box spring sitting on the curb. I got out of the car, carry the mattress home and dear John tried to help! The box spring I put halfway in the trunk of the car praying that would make it. I asked John to thank God for his medicine and for my bed, that I would buy only one and it would be his own new bed. First he said you cannot carry it, Mom! Then with the box spring he said: It won’t make it laughing really hard, it did look funny the way it was hanging from the car. So I told him: If God made me find it, He will let me carry it.

18 But when they measured it out, everyone had just enough. Those who
gathered a lot had nothing left over, and those who gathered only a little had
enough. Each family had just what it needed.
Exodus 16:18 (NLT)