blessings for the church

There are different ways of looking at situations life throws your way. You can learn from them or you can be frustrated by them. Usually it's a little of both. Lately God has been teaching me some pretty cool stuff through the church, though.
I know the budget crisis for Ethnos is not a good thing. But I do think it has had some positive effects on our community. Justin shared how he has been in prayer more lately than ever before. I have been learning a lot about conserving money through sacred space stuff.
It is not that I spent a lot of church money before, or anything. I've always tried to be cautious about buying stuff for the church. But lately I have been more cautious than ever because there is literally no money at all to spend.
What it takes is a lot of creative thinking about how we are going to make things happen. Which, in my opinion, is a good thing that we miss out on when we have a budget and things come easily. I know from experience in art and film that usually the best things happen when you are forced to do something creative to make up for materials you don't have. This looks like using a wheelchair for tracking shots in El Mariachi or reusing old canvases for paintings. Things like that.
Now... a couple of pretty sweet things have happened in the past couple days that prove this point. The studio team has been helping put together some sacred space stuff for the upcoming Quake conference that the PRB is serving at. We have no budget for this either, but a lot of work to do, so we've been trying to find ways to get everything done on time and for cheap/free.
One of the things I had to do was get together a bunch of verses on parchment paper and matboard. We have no more parchment paper, so I went to the store where we got the first batch (for cheap). The store was closed, so I had to get creative. I ended up finding a whole ream of paper for under $7, which is more than enough for the conference. But I was still worried about finding so much matboard. Matboard is really expensive. I figured I would just have to look for some really cheap somewhere and conserve it as best I could.
Well, I went to craft warehouse to see if there was something I could use (they have low prices), and I found a whole stack of like 30 or 40 pieces of recycled cardboard sitting on the floor in the aisle. It was perfect-- exactly the sizes I needed and plenty of it, because they were the cardboard inserts that come in the back of a ream of cardstock. I took them to the front counter and explained where I had found them and asked if I could buy them for cheap (the store usually just recycles them). After some haggling the clerk decided to give them to me for free!
It was so much better than my original plan because it took so much less work to put everything together, and the whole thing ended up costing only $7. Plus, I know for the future how and where to get those materials for much, much cheaper than we've gotten them in the past.
The next blessing was that we were looking for a whole bunch of cardboard to put together some stuff for the stations. I had called around to find somewhere I could pick up free refrigerator boxes, but the closest place was in SE Portland, so I had decided not to do it today. I went instead to pick up my sister from school. She goes to school in downtown Beaverton, and I sat waiting for her in the parking lot, I thought to myself "You know, the recycling center is right down the street, maybe there is some cardboard there?".
She and I went by the center, and I was planning on basically dumpster diving, seeing if there was anything usable I could salvage. As we pulled into the parking lot it started raining, and I thought, "great, all the cardboard will be soggy now". Then we saw a truck pulling in and a man unloading huge cardboard crates.
I went over and asked him if I could take the crates (he was lifting them on a forklift). He goes, "Lady, these boxes are the size of your car, there is no way you can take them home with you. Plus, they're full of cardboard."
I asked him if I could look around inside them, and he agreed. What was in there was HUGE pieces of cardboard EXACTLY THE SIZE I NEEDED. My sister and I completely loaded our car with as much as we could, and just in time. We managed to get all of the cardboard into the car while it was still dry (it was protected from the rain by being stacked inside the box).
So, my point in writing all of this, is that God is good in the small things. These two things, even though they are not all that important in the grand scheme of life, saved me a lot of time and money this week. And I am really thankful for that, because if we had had a huge budget, I probably would not have tried these options. I would probably have bought cardboard and matboard and expensive parchment somewhere else, thinking I was saving myself time, and actually just making more work for the team.
So I hope these lessons stick with me even if our budget troubles change (and I really hope they do). Because it is good to know that what I think is the easiest way actually may not be, and God blesses us when we are faithful and good stewards of the what he has already given us....