i’ve got you covered.

Travel weary and ready for lunch, my straggly gang and I waited in the line at Chick-fil-A.

Four hours of driving behind us.  Three hours of driving in front of us.

An irritated older gentleman pushed right around us to reach the cashier asking who was next.  His exagerated sighs told me he was probably a lot more concerned about his chicken sandwich with Polynesian sauce than I was so I ignored his line cutting.

Turns out our cashier was a little less than speedy and that was alright, because we order a little less than speedy too.  Another customer was to our left following Irritated Older Gentleman before all five kids meals were even ordered.

From the corner of my eye I saw movement and felt a hand tap mine.  It was Next Customer Stranger.  He tapped my hand and winked and said, “Please.  Take this.  Seriously.”  I kind of smiled at him and looked at what was being placed in my hand before my recognition of what he was doing connected from eye to hand to brain.

I looked up with a question mark expression and he nodded his head and I said, “Thank you.  So much.”  I think he smiled but he was gone by the time I answered the cashier’s question of “What name can I put this under?”

Next Customer Stranger paid for our lunch at a random Chick-fil-a off Interstate 85 somewhere in North Carolina.

And it was like I felt a literal pat on my back and this phrase whispered into my ear of “I’ve got you covered.”

God provides.

He just does.

He shows up in family loving on you all week and cousins generously buying your kids their first rock candy on a stick and playing endless games of Mario Cart and hide and seek and succumbing to being a personal jungle gym for your six-year-old.

He shows up in homemade meals served to you and yours nightly at the house where you are treated somehow as both guests and family in the best possible way those two words can be combined.

God shows up.

It is what He does.

And, in my life, I have found it to be true: His provision usually looks like regular ordinary people who show up and share what they have.