Birds Neither Plant nor Reap

Matthew 6:26

      The Voice (VOICE)

²⁶ Look at the birds in the sky. They do not store food for winter. They don’t plant gardens. They do not sow or reap—and yet, they are always fed because your heavenly Father feeds them. And you are even more precious to Him than a beautiful bird. If He looks after them, of course He will look after you.

Sylvia and I left the U.S. to work in Tanzania right after I finished my master’s degree in Mathematics. We went to Ikizu Secondary School where I taught mathematics and a long list of other subjects that I was less prepared for.

At the beginning of our second year, we received a letter from the mission board chiding us for not pointing out that they weren’t taking rent out of our salary. I pointed out that I was very new and had no idea what things were deductible from my salary. That, of course, didn’t matter. They wrote us back stating that they were going to deduct present and past rent from our current salary explaining that I owed them more than several months’ salary. They wrote further that they understood that we probably couldn’t live on nothing for several months, so they would be sending us the equivalent of $20 a month until the back rent was paid. Even in 1968 in the heart of Africa, this was not much money!

For the next six months we lived on $20 a month. We had no children. We bought no clothes. We did no traveling. We had no vehicle and its related expenses. Fellow missionaries chipped in by taking us to the open-air market in Musoma to buy food. We lived mostly on the 3-B diet: beans, bread, and bananas.

Toward the end of that time, my parents, who were missionaries in Zambia, drove up in their VW Microbus to visit us. Mom looked at me critically and encouraged me to go see a doctor. She insisted I was way too thin and probably had some tropical parasites feasting on my insides. I didn’t have.

Actually, during this time we lived well and healthfully. We got sufficient sleep and never went hungry. As Christ promised in His Sermon on the Mount, God looked after us just like He looks after the birds of the air. We learned faith in Christ’s promises.

Thank You, Lord, that You look after us so well in spite of financial and other setbacks.

Thanks to BareFootRunning.com for the picture