Everything I Need
Aspiring actors are the most expendable resource in Hollywood. There are so many of them infesting the city, film studios can afford to treat them with hostility or at least indifference. When I was twenty-three, I drove out to Hollywood to join the ranks of these unwanted dreamers with no friends, connections, apartment, or job waiting for me. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
With the cards stacked this heavily against me, I decided to become self-sufficient. I needed to guarantee my survival without having to rely on anyone else. So I packed my car with everything I could possibly need: food, water, a camp stove, bags of clothes, miscellaneous toiletries, books, knives, and dehumidifiers. I took out the seats and laid down a sleeping bag so I wouldn’t need an apartment and I got a gym membership for showers. It was like a mobile biosphere.
The only problem is my car is a Fiat 500, so there was no room for any of this. As I drove across the country trying not to get squashed under the tower of gear, it began to dawn on me how irrational this search for self-sufficiency was.
A part of me still operates this way. I need an income to pay expenses, and I need to save money in case I lose the income. But if I lose the income, I will use up my savings, so I need more savings and probably more income. I also need enough savings for accidents and emergencies and I need to diversify my assets in case another Great Depression turns all my money into kindling.
I need duplicates of everything I own, or at least the ability to replace everything I own in case of inevitable fire or theft. I’m always anxious, knowing I don’t have enough and am imminently about to lose what I have. Under this cloud of paranoid pessimism, every day is spent waiting for the other shoe to drop in a world of infinite shoes.
Helen Keller said, ”Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.” Like Hollywood, this world is a dangerous and hostile place in which security does not exist. Eventually everyone runs out of resources to stay alive. I will never have enough, and I am always in danger of losing what I have.
Yet in another sense, I will always have what I need. In the parable of the talents, God determines what each servant is given, and they are to steward it.* If I’ve been given one talent, my job is not to complain about it in light of the ten talents someone else has, or try to hoard more, or even worry about losing it. My job is just to be faithful with what I have and trust God to provide what I need.
I live in a constant state of awareness at my insufficiency, when in reality I lack nothing. I am absolutely safe and secure in Christ. Emmanuel – God with us. Jehovah-Jireh – the Lord will provide. God’s presence and provision are so central to His character, they are tied into His name. This is who He is and this is what He does.
When I trust in my collection of resources to provide for me, I am putting my security in something far less trustworthy than what I already have access to in Christ. Eric Ludy describes it as trusting in a tiny puddle when God has an underground aquifer at His disposal.
Three days after I arrived in Hollywood, I got in a wreck. Sitting on the side of the road looking at my broken house, I felt strangely free. Before the front end was ripped off my car, I thought freedom was found in having everything I needed. But when I had everything, I was just afraid of losing it. I learned freedom is found in losing everything I have; releasing my desperate grip on possessions and my demand that they provide for me.
I can not provide for myself – it is a burden I was never meant to carry. God is the one who has provided and will provide everything I need.
J.
*Matthew 25:14-30
June 29, 2021