It was a printed sheet. That is what she keeps coming back to. Not a meeting, not a phone call, not somebody taking her aside. A sheet of paper taped to the wall by the kettle in the break room, curling slightly at one corner because the tape was old, and her name on it with three lines next to it where there used to be five.
She read it twice. Then she read the names above and below hers to see whether it had happened to anybody else, which is a thing you do before you have decided how to feel. Then somebody came in behind her wanting the kettle, so she moved out of the way and said morning and went and started her shift, because there was nothing else to do with a Tuesday.
The arithmetic started in the car. It always starts in the car. Two shifts is roughly this much a month, which is the road tax and most of the electricity, or it is the food shop for two weeks, depending on which way you slice it, and she sliced it about nine different ways before she got to the roundabout and none of the ways worked.
Nobody did anything wrong to her. That is the strange grief of it. The rota changed. Somewhere upstairs a spreadsheet balanced. And her whole month tilted on the strength of a piece of paper that nobody thought needed a conversation attached to it.
If you have read something like that this month, I am going to sit down at your table rather than talk at you from across the room, because I think you have been doing this arithmetic alone for a while.
And I want to ask you one question before we go any further. Not what you are going to do about it.
Who has actually been feeding you all these years?
Your provision was never printed on that sheet
I want to say something about supply, because I look after the systems in a house, and supply is my daily work.
Water arrives at a tap. Everyone in the building would tell you the tap is where the water comes from, and they would be wrong, and they would only find out they were wrong when the tap ran dry and the water was still there, further back, in a main they had never once thought about.
A tap is not a source. It is a delivery point. And when a delivery point closes, it feels exactly like the source has closed, because that is the only place you have ever seen the water.
Those hours were a delivery point. A real one. A good one. God has fed you through that job faithfully, and He is not embarrassed about using an employer, and losing it is a genuine loss and I am not going to spiritualize that away. But the main is not the tap. Psalm 145:16 is written about a hand that opens, not about a rota that closes. His Spirit has been holding that difference steady for you since the morning you read the sheet.
But that sheet on the wall by the kettle was never your source. It was a tap, and taps get closed by people upstairs who have never met you, and the main is untouched.
Now let me name what this is actually costing you, because I do not want to hurry past the low place to get to the good part.
It is costing you sleep on the specific nights before the specific dates. You know your calendar in a way people with margin do not, and you can tell me exactly which day of the month the pressure lands.
It is costing you your dignity in small, grinding ways. Checking the balance before the shopping. Standing at the till doing sums. Saying no to something a child asked for and hearing yourself dress it up as a decision about principles.
It is costing you your nerve. You used to be able to absorb a surprise. Now a letter with a window in the envelope can put your stomach through the floor before you have opened it.
And it is costing you the belief that you are competent, because there is a voice that says a capable adult would not be here, and that voice is a liar, and it has been very loud lately. It is not the voice of God and it never has been. His Spirit does not accuse, and there is not one line written anywhere in Scripture that grades a person by their rota.
You are not incompetent. A rota changed. Those are not the same thing and they were never the same thing.
Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?Luke 12:24
Jesus picks the raven on purpose. Not a beautiful bird, not a clean one, not one anybody was sentimental about. A scavenger with no storehouse and no barn, no reserves at all, no financial instrument of any kind, and God feeds it every single day. And then the line that is aimed directly at you: how much more are you.
Now hear what this is not, because this category attracts nonsense and I will not put any near you. Nothing you do with money moves God to act. There is no arrangement here, no exchange, no transaction, nothing you can hand over to make heaven respond faster. Anyone who tells you your provision depends on what you release is telling you something Jesus never said, and I want that idea nowhere near your kitchen table tonight. God feeds ravens, and ravens have never given anybody anything.
He does that at the level of the one. Not at the level of populations, not for the deserving, not for the ones with better paperwork. For the person whose name got thinner on a sheet by the kettle.
So here is what happens now, at your table, with the letters in front of you.
You have been holding a figure in your head. You know it to the pound. You have not written it down, because writing it down makes it real, and looking at it directly feels like looking at your own failure in handwriting.
Tonight it comes out of your head and onto paper, and the reason is not accounting. It is that a need you can see is a need you can hand over, and a need circling in your head at two in the morning is a need you are carrying alone. You are not carrying it alone once it is written down and said out loud. Casting the whole of it on Him is not my suggestion. It is 1 Peter 5:7, written as an instruction rather than a sentiment, and the handover is a real one because His Spirit makes it so.
You are not asking for luxury and you are not being greedy, and I know you have already run that inspection on yourself several times. You are asking for the thing the ravens get without asking.
And this is not a technique. Nothing here obliges God, and nothing here is a guarantee about your Friday. What is happening is simpler and steadier than that. You are moving your weight off a closed tap and onto a main that has never once run dry, and you are doing it out loud, tonight, in your own kitchen. The main is not my idea. It is written. His Spirit is the pressure in it.
Declare this over yourself
Say them out loud, and then go and look for work, because both are yours to do. In Christ your worth was not cut when your hours were, and that is the standing here. Address the fear and the shame that arrived with it, and leave the outcome to Him who feeds what does not store. None of the weight of this rests on how well you say it. You are speaking a written line back rather than composing one. Luke 12:24 has God feeding ravens that keep no barn. The Spirit of God carries the sentence from your kitchen table to the throne, and the wording is not what makes the journey.
- Hours that got cut without notice, you did not cut my worth. The Word of God says consider the ravens, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and God feedeth them.
- Fear about the shortfall, get out in the name of Jesus. Ravens keep no storehouse and they are not anxious, and He says I am worth far more than they.
- Lord, You feed what does not store, and You know exactly what my hours are now. I look for work and I look to You, and I do both without shame.
Luke 12:24
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