Today a friend, who is going through something very difficult, sent me an email with an excerpt from the book The Hiding Place, by Corrie Ten Boom. I had commented earlier that I would not have been able to handle the situation my friend was currently in:

“When I was a little girl,” I said, “I went to my father and said, ‘Daddy, I am afraid that I will never be strong enough to be a martyr for Jesus Christ.’ “

“Tell me,” said Father, “When you take a train trip to Amsterdam, when do I give you the money for the ticket? Three weeks before?”

“No, Daddy, you give me the money for the ticket just before we get on the train.”

“That is right,” my father said, “and so it is with God’s strength. Our Father in Heaven knows when you will need the strength to be a martyr for Jesus Christ. He will supply all you need – just in time…”

In this excerpt, which I had forgotten, I find exactly what I need to hear when I needed to hear it.

Lately, I don’t see how I can make it even a week from today. I fear, I am ashamed to admit, what tomorrow brings because I don’t know that I can handle anything else, on top of what is happening now. I don’t see a solution, don’t hear an answer, and have taken to thinking of life as just one more bad thing on top of another and not feeling ready to head into tomorrow.

But, just in time, I will be made ready.

“Give us this day our daily bread,” the prayer goes. Just what I need for today. Not for tomorrow or three weeks from today or next month. We aren’t to collect manna beyond what we need, and hoard it, or it will rot. Enough for today, and that’s all. I can’t prepare for what I don’t know is coming, and so worrying about it is silly.

Just in time, I get what I need.

I will need to re-hear this tomorrow; it is likely I will have forgotten again.