I wrote this riding in the car on our way back from family camp at Laity Lodge. We’re passing lots of ramshackle homes—peeling paint, crooked roof lines, sagging foundations, broken windows. I know it sounds strange, but there’s something inside me that longs for poverty like that. To truly trust God for food, for sustenance, for clothing.

I remember hearing this woman talk about needing a pair of shoes. She was a pastor’s wife. She’d seen this particular pair she really wanted. She felt silly praying for those shoes, but wouldn’t you know it, but those shoes showed up on her doorstep in a paper bag.

Sometimes in our desperate circumstances, we have the unique opportunity to see the hand of God in a tangible way.

But as I watched those shacks speed by, the Lord said to me, “I will be that kind of surprising intervention in your heart life.” In other words, I didn’t have to live in a shack to see the providence of God. He would provide beautiful surprises to my soul—those unspoken prayer requests He answers just at the right time.

Over the past several months, there are times when I felt my soul was as dilapidated as a ramshackle house. Just as I careened to the edge of a very dark precipice, ready to give in or up, God came so very near. He gave me spiritual shoes to keep walking. I’ll ever praise Him for that.