“God will Provide”
A Pauls Valley Christmas Story
By Mary Gowing
It all started with Lou Hall, a lovely older woman in our congregation with a faith to move mountains and start food pantries. One day, in the fall, while Lou and I were heading to Sunday school, there was trash on the church lawn. Of course, Lou went to pick it up. I joined in but wondered aloud to her, what does she do when there’s too much litter to hold in her hand or if it is too messy. She said that when that happens, God will provide a bag. She then proceeded to look around and lo and behold there was a plastic Walmart sack caught and hanging in the branches of a young tree near the church entrance. She plucked it off the tree, we put in our litter and went to Sunday school.
That’s when I got the idea of a “God will provide” themed Christmas tree. A themed Christmas tree had become a family tradition in our house ever since our daughter, a young teen at the time, decided to make 1,000 origami paper cranes. We ended up stringing the cranes together in long strands and hanging them lengthwise from top to bottom all around the tree. And thus, our tradition of a themed tree was born. Other themes along the years have been Pandas, Mushrooms, the Amendments to the Constitution, Owls, Poetry (we called it a Poe-tree), and more. So, when Lou said and showed me that “God will provide” I decided to choose that phrase as our tree theme. I didn’t want it to be a test of God’s providence but more of an act of faith on our part. I told people the tree theme but didn’t suggest they “provide” anything. I tried to stay neutral and not overtly ask anyone to give us ornaments. After all it was a “God will provide tree”, not a “Mary will beg for decorations” tree.
My sister Polly mailed us some ornaments she had crafted: folded paper stars, winter scenes and animal images mod-podged onto heavy card stock. However, the tree was looking kind of skimpy. I thought to myself, with a bit of a sigh, “Well, if that’s what God wants to provide for our tree, that’s fine with me”. THEN, one morning, about a week before Christmas, after a particularly windy Oklahoma night, I went outside and to my surprise, there, all over the front and side yard were Christmas tree ornaments! Christmas Tree Ornaments! Red and gold un-shatterable balls, about 30 or more, were strewn about, like manna from heaven for my ornament hungry tree. Looking around me, with a glee filled heart, I noticed there were some more in the road and across the street as well. I started picking up the balls and putting them in a little well I made with my sweatshirt by holding it outward, away from me. There were so many: the balls in the yard and in the street and all around, I couldn’t carry anymore, I was full to over-flowing. That’s when I noticed the BAG! A red nylon bag with strings attached to wear as a backpack, just lying on the ground at the base of a big maple tree. As I filled the bag with my provision, I calmed down enough to wonder, how did this happen? Where did all these ornaments come from?
I remembered seeing some decorations in the outdoor planters at the Methodist church entrance just up the street from our house and so I walked over to check out if those could be the source of our “windfall”. In each of two large planters were a live Christmas pine shrub and a sparse, few ornaments. Those pots had been full to the brim with Christmas decorations the last time I saw them. I called their pastor, a friend of mine, and left her a crazy voice mail about how God had provided my family’s Christmas tree ornaments that year thanks to her church and the wind. I told her we had a “God will provide” tree and that is what God did!
At the outset, I thought we would mention our Christmas tree theme to folks and that the people of our congregation and others would give us a few ornaments here and there and the tree would fill up. However, God had something else in mind, something I never would have imagined or predicted. In a miraculous way, with the help of our unsuspecting neighbor church and with the famous Oklahoma wind doing a lot of the “heavy lifting” God provided! I gratefully put the ornaments on our tree, and then thankfully returned them to their planters a few days after Christmas.
What is the lesson from this Pauls Valley Christmas tale? Surely, at its core, it is that God is faithful and will provide. We also learn that sometimes we are a part of how God is providing even if we don’t know it (thank you, Methodists!). We learn, too, that God provides in unimaginable ways, so we should keep our minds and hearts open to God’s activities and not lose heart or faith but hold on to hope.
God is indeed faithful and generous and provides for us in ways we may not expect or even recognize; maybe, sometimes, even in miraculous, amazing, funny ways that make us shout, clap our hands and leave crazy voice mails.
We learn that God not only provides, but like Lou Hall said, even provides a bag!
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2025!
Author Mary Gowing, Pastor Chas’ wife of 35 years, volunteers with Samaritans of Pauls Valley, enjoys Zumba at the PV Rec Center and performs often with the productions of the Garvin County Choral Society and Sinfonietta.
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