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Blessed Are the Broke

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By Caryn Rivadeneira

. . and rich are the financially desperate. Just ask my family.

It had been more than a year since I had seen her. We’d had our share of good conversations when our kids had attended Christian school together, but her frown moving toward me through the crowd left me looking for escape routes.

She arrived with hands held out to hold my shoulders as she looked me over, shaking that frown at me.

“We’ve missed you,” she said. “How horrible that you had to leave.”

I breathed. “It’s not horrible. Far from it.”

She grabbed my hand.

“No, really,” I said. “Public school is where God wanted us. It was hard to leave, but the school has been a blessing.”

She winked. “It’s good you can say that.”

“I’m not just saying that. I mean it.”

“I’m sure you do.”

And I did. We had left the school because we couldn’t pay the tuition. Years of facing under- then unemployment, compounded by mounting medical debt, will do that. But I had sensed God calling us to our local public school for a long time.

Frowny Face obviously couldn’t believe that. Neither did the people who pitied us during our “terrible” season of being broke. Not with a quiet belief system that’s grown rather insidious among the faithful.

It’s a belief system implied every time a Christian told me to have faith, to keep our kids enrolled in the Christian school because God will provide. It’s a belief system that many Christians don’t name and claim outright but still subtly embrace. It’s the belief that God confirms our faithfulness by adding zeroes to pay stubs, by keeping us healthy, by giving us spouses and babies. That while God may …

Read more here: Blessed Are the Broke