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“Something Olde, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue,  A Sixpence in your Shoe”

There’s an old wedding tradition designed to bring good luck where the bride wears these five tokens, something old to symbolize continuity, something new to represent hope, borrowed to symbolize happiness on loan, blue for purity and love, and a sixpence for prosperity.

There’s a prosperity gospel we don’t hear spoken of much, one that little didy always reminds me of. Everything we have is actually borrowed from God, every breath we take, every heart beat, everything we fashion from our hands, the people in our lives, the places we visit, the time we have. God is a God of abundance who showers us with blessings, who gifts us with fertile ground.  Even in the midst of a desert surrounded by hostile neighbors, if God says it’s fertile ground and people are faithful, they will prosper. Conversely however, people can live in significant poverty surrounded by great resources, vast treasures, and just never quite access them.

We often forget to recognize from whom all blessings flow. We’re a driven people and it somewhat natural to want to say,”I built that.” I was faithful, I was diligent, those are my labors. I made that happen. My husband, God bless him, just hates it when I say, “the Lord will provide.” He believes that he will provide, and while it is true, he is a great provider and he labors daily to take care of his own, he cannot quite see what I can see. I see the Lord’s hand on him. I see how he has always been blessed with the contacts he needs, the work he desires, the resources, at just the right time. I see my prayers for him answered. He’s a great hubby too, he can make something out nothing, pave a path where I can’t even see one.

I’m a bit like my husband that way, driven, or I would be, except I have knack for finding unpaid work or low paid work or work that is actually going to cost me to do it. It’s so bad, it’s somewhat amusing, but it has taught me something. If you work hard, if you’re diligent, if you put in the effort, it can prosper you absolutely nothing. Nothing but treasures stored up in heaven, that is. So I have learned the hard way the error that really lies within the words, “I built that, I’m self made, I did it my way.”

No, you have been blessed.

Many people work very hard, people like me, and do not prosper. I’ve often wondered about that and because I walk with the Lord, I know it is something within me that makes that happen, generational curses, attitude issues, false teachings. The Lord wishes to bless me and yet I often block it. Part of my problem is that my parents were rather well off, they came from opportunity, higher education, inheritances, and they did not use that to prosper others, to produce anything of value. In fact, they both blew through what they had been given and wound up homeless, dependent on the system and their own children, and they wounded us all in the process.

It’s an “inheritance” from my parents I have struggled my whole life to be free of, a generational curse I do not want to repeat. I have had lean into the Lord, to remind myself it is His kingdom I wish to inherit, His ways I wish to partake of, His will I wish to follow. It requires a great deal of surrender and some humility, “show me Lord, search my heart and fix what is broken within.” Lead me to “thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.“

He truly has, emotionally, spiritually, health wise, He has granted me great riches, He has given me the eyes to see things many others cannot. I truly do feel as if He has prospered me. I walk in a world full of abundant blessings, enjoying a quality of life kings and queens of old could only dream of. I have been greatly blessed, I have learned the meaning of the words, For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. I truly understand the things that have genuine value in the world… and they aren’t things at all. Learning that alone is a priceless gift, abundance on top of the gift of salvation, that one is just overwhelmed by the wonder of it all.

God is not finished with me however, He has yet to place that sixpence in my shoe.

I suspect there are many others like me, people who suffer from spiritual wounding, that manifests itself as an inability to prosper even in the midst of fertile ground. I know half the path back home to healing, and it begins by leaning into the Lord, by trusting in His promises, and by understanding that everything we have is on loan from Him, but that  He is a God of abundance and great blessings who opens doors for us even when can see none.

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