Chronicle Of A (Small) Financial Miracle

December 5, 2009

The problem I’m having with a God Who was just supposed to have kicked off some process of
evolution gazillions of years ago and then told His prophets to write down a story of creation only to
be saying afterwards, “I was just kiddin’ folks – I used Evolution to do it” is that He would most
likely be gazillions of miles away from me. If He was too busy to be involved in the creation of at
least the first man (and woman), the way the Bible said He was, but instead let man gradually evolve
from a looooooong line of monkeys and other mammals, reptiles and tadpoles, making who or
whatever was capable of being called the first man resemble a cross between Frankenstein and King
Kong rather than the image of God Almighty, then He would also be way too busy to count the hairs
on our heads the way Jesus said He would, and make that statement just another one of countless lies,
exaggerations and “not-so’s” in the Bible.
Certainly He’d be to busy to be involved in my financial problems, and one of the first chapters I’d
have to rip out of my New Testament would be Matthew 6, in which Jesus admonishes His disciples
not to live for physical things, but promises that if they would seek first the Kingdom of God, all these
things would be added unto them.
Not that that chapter would have much actual relevance in the lives of probably 99% of existing
Christians in the 21st century. But it does to me. It has, ever since I met the Family International at the
age of 13. I had been reading the New Testament on my way to school and got so turned on about it
that I got in trouble even with the leaders of our local faith community because I told the parents of
one of my school mates that I took Matthew 6 literally (and they called up the community inquiring
whether I was the only loony).
Many local community leaders later I still believe in it.
I remember the time in Argentina in 1984 when my future wife, another team member and I traveled
3000 km within 3 weeks for our radio show, having 50 Dollars in our pockets, and never having spent
one dime of them. Actually, we returned with more than what we had left with, and yet we had
traveled in comfortable buses, spent the nights in pensions or hotels and had 3 meals a day in different
restaurants, all donated. We held meetings for our listeners in half a dozen different towns in halls,
hotel lobbies or similar places without having to pay a dime for their usage.
I know what it means when God says “I have set before thee an open door that no man can shut.”
That’s why I get so upset when “Christians” call Him a liar and say, “No, He was just kidding in the
Bible, and we can scientifically prove it.”
Probably if I were a professor at some university teaching my students all the many reasons why
Charles Darwin makes more sense than all the prophets in the Bible put together, I’d have to believe
my own b…sh.t, too in order to be able to live with myself.
Perhaps fortunately for some and unfortunately for most, I don’t receive a big check at the end of the
month for pursuing any such activity.
One of the few things I have done for a living in order to help God a little bit keep that Promise about
“all these things shall be added unto you” has been to play a little bit of music every now and then.
And the older you get, the more you can relate to the old chieftain in “Little Big Man” in the “Good
day to die” scene where he performs the magic ritual in preparation for his entrance into the eternal
hunting grounds: “Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t.”
This past month was one of those months when “it doesn’t,” since we didn’t have a single gig, and the
bills kept coming anyway.
We have those months every once in a while, and so far, He has always done it and never let us down.
Did I mention that I faithfully give my tithe ever since I earned my first income at the age of 17 before
I bid my mom goodbye to follow Jesus?
I know God wasn’t kidding either about His Promise “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that
there may be meat in Mine house, and prove Me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not
open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to
receive it” (Malachi 3:10). Some say it’s “unscriptural” to tithe. Well, I’m not the right person to be
taught that sort of theology. I might just tell you in your face, “Man, why don’t you be honest and just
admit that you’re stingy?”
Once in Spain in 1980 I had to come up with my daily contribution to the rent of the local community
I had just joined and had to “pioneer” and open up new singing contacts in a town where I had just
tried to do so a few days earlier with a partner to no avail. I was pretty desperate. God likes us to get
desperate sometimes. So I prayed, and I received that verse. Sure enough, at the end of the night my
pockets were bursting with cash, and I had been blessed with 15 times the amount I needed.
He had not forsaken me.
The funny thing is, though, that no matter how often these miracles happen, you always tend to forget
them, and as soon as the due date for the rent is in sight and the cash is not around, nor any gig on the
schedule that promises to bring it in, one starts wondering and whining again, “My God, why hast
Thou forsaken Me?”
It’s like that film “50 First Dates,” in which a girl with extreme memory loss had to be wooed each
day anew by her lover.
So I decided to write down this month’s miracle while it’s happening, to make sure I won’t forget it
next time:
On Monday we somehow realized that we had the money for our utilities bill (water and electricity)
and so transferred that money, leaving us at zero: “Welcome to Rock Bottom Club!”
We still had to come up with our rent, though. This was a job for Super-God. But we knew we had to
do our part, too.
So we decided to follow up on some contacts and spent about an hour witnessing to the owner of a
local gravestone company, who seemed thankful that we brought a little light into his confusion.
“Thanks,” he said! “One never knows what to believe anymore these days.”
When we wanted to move on, we realized we weren’t going to get very far with our summer tires in
the snow, So we turned around, stopped by a junkyard in the nearby Swiss town of Schaffhausen, and
the owner donated 4 pretty decent winter tires, which Sparkles, my better half and also the better
mechanic between the two of us, mounted the next morning at a friend’s place who owns the local
Toyota garage.
On that day we couldn’t go witnessing because I had a guitar pupil coming in and our daughter had
school theater rehearsals, meaning we had to stay with our dog, so our adventure continued on
Wednesday.
We didn’t get very far that day before I felt like I needed a coffee as we walked through the closest
larger size town. So we stopped at a restaurant whose owner Sparkles knew and who might donate a
coffee since we were still broke…
We showed the owner lady our new Christmas CD and were going to leave it for her to listen to. But
she didn’t want to let us go without paying for it, and in the process also bought two more of our CDs
for her son.
We had just become richer by the sum of one sixth of our rent.
On our way home we passed by another restaurant Sparkles knew and the owner lady said she had just
been thinking about her. She also gladly took a Christmas CD and gave us a bottle of Uruguayan wine
on top of it…
On Thursdays we have a small prison ministry in a German town that’s about 40 km from our place
where we visit and sing for a group of 5 to 10 prisoners. On our way there we passed by a gas station
belonging to a very sweet couple who had called earlier this week saying that they would like to have
our Christmas CD (we had sent out an email on Monday attaching one of the best songs from it,
something we’ll keep doing until Christmas), and so they gave us another donation that brought us a
bit closer to the full amount of our due rent, along with a Swiss highway vignette (a yearly sticker you
need on your car in order to be able to use Swiss highways).
When we returned home later that evening, another person had bought our Christmas CD online, and
we were slooowly but surely getting toward about half our rent.
This morning, Sparkles went to visit a friend she sees regularly, and he just so happened to be inspired
to help us with another sixth of our rent, plus a new 4 GB USB stick smaller than a finger nail (he’s a
shop owner)…
Then in the afternoon some unexpected visitors came: a very sweet couple from a nearby Swiss
division of our faith community stormed in unannounced and said they wanted to leave us a gift,
which turned out to be yet another third of our rent. There is a God, and He loves us.
Finally, (after a break of about a year or so), Sparks and I grabbed our guitar and took it to some
Restaurants we had played in when we had hit previous dry spells. The last few times had been
another example of when the magic doesn’t work. But tonight it did.
The rent was in!
And when we got home we found out that another sweet couple from our Family had sent us another
generous donation in appreciation of our German albums which we’ve made available for free
download, and now we’re just about able to pay our upcoming health insurance bill, too.
Of course, we know people who have testimonies of how God supplied hundreds of thousands of
Euros or dollars for them, and these are probably easier to remember than those little miracles that
keep us going and prove to us over and over again that He loves us and won’t forsake us, in spite of
the mess we are.
Perhaps that’s why I just can’t bring myself to believe that He’s just supposed to have flipped a switch
to turn on the evolutionary machinery and then headed for the highlands to leave us evolving and
fending for ourselves. Either God’s philosophy is “survival of the fittest,” or “The meek shall inherit
the earth” – it can hardly be both.
Well, if you would like to become part of the continuing miracle of our simple faith life, you’ll find
the “donate” button on our site, so feel free. Rest assured that every small gift will be genuinely
appreciated.
And if you should not yet have experienced personally that God is not too far away or too busy to help
you make it through your financial dry periods, perhaps our little testimony managed to encourage
you. If He did it for us, there’s no doubt He’ll do it for you.