Our Awesome God

Your heavenly Father knows you need them all. Set your hearts on his kingdom first, and on his righteousness and all these other things wil be given you as well.

Matthew 6:32-33

As some of you know, my contract ends the month of July. With no sure source of income after that, except for our savings, I did what I know would help. I went to the Lord and prayed. In my prayers, the Lord showed me his majesty by pointing out to the current financial situation of our diocese.

Some of you may already know, the Diocese of Victoria in Canada, just went through some hard times. The former bishop made some wrong financial decisions which left the diocese with 17 million dollars in debt at 18% interest per annum. That means the diocese has to pay about 7,000$ each day in interest alone.

The new bishop did not know this and was just surprised when the bank would not accept their cheques because the diocese had overdrawn all their funds. To his credit, the bishop informed the parishoners about the problem. Sad to say, the press picked this up and this in fact caused a big scandal in the diocese.

There were feelings of anger towards to former bishop (who according to the canonical inquiry violated canon law by not obtaining approval for these investments). The diocese was divided into his supporters and those who were not too comfortable with his views on social justice (to use a more accurate word, political correctness).

Everyone knew that the only way out of this is to sell some of the church assets. We all know what happens when you want to get rid of something quick. You don't get the true value of the property. To buy more time, the diocese sold bonds at 6% per annum, to at least stop the 7,000$ per day interest. The goal was to sell 12 million$ in bonds as a bank was willing to lend the diocese another 6 million dollars.

Before the bonds were sold, the bishop had all the parishes in the diocese dedicate Fridays as days of prayer for the success of this campaign and healing. Each diocese also was allocated a target amount. The Cathedral parish had 1.2 million to raise in four weeks. The first two weeks, the total bonds and donations amounted to less than 300,000 dollars. But in a matter of one week, the total was 1 million dollars. In a matter of a week, the parish was able to raise 700,000 dollars. As of last week, the parish met its target of 1.2 million dollars. And the diocese was less than 1 million away from the target of 12 million dollars.

This is indeed a work of the Lord. Even before the sale of bonds a Muslim family donated a substantial amount towards the debt. There was also a lady and her sister-in-law who took a two hour trip from Vancouver to Victoria to invest 6,000$. What is more surprising is that these two ladies were not even Catholics. They just donated because they support the Church's stand on moral issues (abortion, same-sex marriages, sanctity of marriage, etc). One even bought 250,000$ worth of bonds.

Isn't our God an awesome God? Only he can raise up 12 million dollars in less than one month! Proof that indeed, God is the Father who provides for all our needs.

Just for the fun of it, I did some calculations. 12 million in 4 weeks means 3 million in one week. This is about 428,000 a day which is 17,500 an hour or 290 per minute and if you want to be exact, 4 dollars per second.

For those who still doubt that God will provide for our needs, this is proof. Our God is an awesome God. He can give more than what most of us earns in a lifetime in less than a week. So why then do we have to worry about our monthly expenses? Or why then should we worry about our needs? If we follow the Lord and are living in him, God is faithful and he will provide.

This realisation has given me a sense of confidence that even if I do not know what is before me in the coming months, I know that my Redeemer lives and he will provide for all my needs - if I live in him.

Blessed be the name of the Lord.