As a teen, I often had the soles of my boots repaired. For ten dollars, I could have the hole in a leather boot repaired and wear the boots until I outgrew them. Today having boots repaired has become almost as expensive as buying a new pair. For one pair that I loved, I simply duct-taped them and kept wearing them around the farm. They looked ridiculous, but I saved a lot of money.
Have you seen SHARK TANK? One of the things investors like to see is a business that produces “consumables.” A consumable is a product that is used up and quickly replaced. For example, a glucometer may last a few years, but a person with diabetes may use three or four “consumable” test strips every day. The construction business uses consumables like drill bits, nails, grinding wheels, gloves, goggles, hoses, rags, and more. There are consumables in every industry.
When God delivered the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt, they rushed into the wilderness with unleavened bread, a food supply “on the hoof,” and the portable household goods of a people on the run. Unlike some American pioneers, no one leaving Egypt put a piano or a china cabinet in the wagon. Everything was small and portable. Nearly everything was a consumable. How long would the journey take? A month? Three months?
The people of Israel may have been hoping for a quick trip, but it was not to be. The older generation refused to march into the Promised Land and God punished them by letting them wander in the wilderness for forty years.
Where would they get food? How would they live? What about all their stuff? Their clothes would wear out. Their shoes would come apart. But God took care of them. Not only did he provide food through the miracle of manna (Exodus 16:31; Psalm 78:24) but he miraculously made their clothes and shoes last for forty years! Moses reports the history:
“I took you through the wilderness for forty years and through all that time the clothes on your backs didn’t wear out, the sandals on your feet didn’t wear out, and you lived well without bread and wine and beer, proving to you that I am in fact God, your God” Deuteronomy 29:5-6 (MSG).
God blessed the clothes and shoes of his people. Nothing wore out.* Can you imagine that? My kids laugh when I pull out a shirt and tell them it is older than they are. But a shirt like that may have hung untouched in the closet for ten years. The Israelites would not have owned a dozen changes of clothes—and what they wore, they wore often. Yet nothing wore out. Only the food was a consumable, and considering the miracle of manna, God made sure the food supply never ran out either.
Do these miracles of God’s provision have anything to do with us? Yes! God can bless your stuff! Pray for your car to last. Pray for your house not to need a new roof. Pray for your shoes and your clothes to not wear out quickly. Does the thought of praying for your shoes sound silly? It was not silly to God. He knew his people needed shoes and clothing and he miraculously made those things last through years and years of rough use in the unforgiving desert. He can do the same for you.
God, show us how to pray about “stuff” and help us to be less wasteful consumers.
ΑΩ
* Not only did God miraculously preserve the clothes and sandals of a million Hebrew power-walkers, but he also preserved the aging body of Moses. Moses was eighty years old when the nation left Egypt. Forty years later they would enter the Promised Land and Moses would go to heaven after taking a peek from a mountaintop in the land of Moab. “And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died. His eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated” Deuteronomy 34:7. Isn’t that amazing? The same God who made sandals last forty years also made the eyes of Moses last 120 years and his energy level remained high. God can do the same for you! Why not pray about it? God may say yes, or he may say no. But the Bible says “you do not have because you do not ask” James 4:2. JUST ASK!