VOLUME 1 • ISSUE NO. 12
THE ORPHANAGE & THE EMBASSY
A TALE OF TWO TABLES
The first people who believed they were orphans didn’t live in an orphanage.
They lived in a garden.
Adam and Eve had a Father, a home and abundance all around them, yet Satan convinced them to look at the one thing they did not have and wonder whether God was holding out on them.
We have been doing the same ever since. Somewhere between disappointment and uncertainty, even a child of God can begin thinking like an orphan:
What if there isn’t enough? What if no one comes through? What if I am on my own? What if...?
Jesus answered those fears with surprising tenderness. When His followers worried about what they would eat, drink and wear, He pointed them to the birds, the lilies and their Father.
“Your heavenly Father already knows all your needs.”
Matthew 6:32 NLT
Today’s story takes us to Prussia in the early 1800s, where we meet a young man who lied, cheated and stole to get more of whatever he thought he needed. His name was George Müller.
Müller gambled, drank and even landed in jail. His father had plans for him nonetheless: George would study theology and become a respectable clergyman with a comfortable living.
So off to divinity school he went, still lying, drinking and stealing.
Then, one evening, a friend took him to a small prayer meeting where he watched ordinary people sincerely pray as though God were actually listening. Müller came to faith, and the young man who had spent years trying to get more for himself would eventually spend his life discovering what it meant to trust God for enough.
Several years later, George and his wife Mary found themselves in Bristol, England, where George encountered destitute children and opened his first orphan house in 1836.
But Müller had another purpose too. He had watched Christians work themselves nearly to exhaustion because they were afraid there would not be enough. He wanted his life to give them something they could see with their own eyes that pointed to something they could not:
God was still, as Müller called Him, “the living God.”
Throughout his life, Müller held a personal conviction that when he needed something, he would ask God before asking man. Asking for help was not wrong, but Müller believed worry accomplished nothing.
George knew the language of the Embassy. He prayed.
And again and again, provision came.
One morning, however, the cupboard was bare. Müller seated the children at the breakfast table and gave thanks anyway. Then came a knock. A baker, unable to sleep, had risen at two that morning to bake bread for them. Then another: a milk cart had broken down outside, and the milk needed somewhere to go.
Breakfast had arrived because, of course, the table was already set.
Maybe that is the difference between the Orphanage and the Embassy. The Orphanage asks, “What if there isn’t enough?” The Embassy asks, “What has the King entrusted to me, and who is it for?”
Scripture calls believers “ambassadors for Christ.” 2 Corinthians 5:20 KJV. An ambassador lives in one country while representing another. What happens outside the embassy is real. The shortages are real. The disappointments are real. But they do not change whose flag flies over it.
John Bunyan gave that invisible reality a landscape. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, Beulah was not Heaven, nor was it the Promised Land. The pilgrims were still traveling, but they had reached a country of encouragement and refreshment for their souls, where they could rest among the promises of the King before continuing their journey.
That is what The Land of Beulah is meant to represent: not the Promised Land, but a land of promises, an Embassy of Heaven for the spirit of the Christian pilgrim still living here.
You cannot see your spirit, but you see the evidence that it is alive. You cannot see imagination either, yet look at everything it has created. Perhaps the gifts and assignments God places within us begin invisibly too. An idea. A compassion. An ability. A burden that simply will not leave. Given the right atmosphere, dormant seeds awaken. Müller saw children who needed a home. Somewhere inside that compassion was an orphanage waiting to be built.
So this week, try something different. If you need encouragement, give some. If you wish somebody would notice you, notice the person everyone else overlooks. If you need kindness, give it first. If you need someone to believe in you, believe in somebody else.
And if all you can see is what you do not have, look again at what the King has already placed in your hand.
Müller couldn’t make bread appear, but he could set the table.
Sometimes faith is surprisingly simple.
And when you catch yourself at the Orphanage, staring through its windows and counting everything missing, let your spirit walk across the street to the Embassy. To Beulah. Instead of worrying about what you lack, remember whose you are. The table is already set. The promises are everywhere. The King’s flag is still flying.
Rest awhile. Spend some time among the King’s people. Remember whose country you represent.
Then walk back across the street.
And perhaps you will be the knock on the door someone has been praying for.
Until next Tuesday, may your blessings be double and your burdens be light.
Michelle Driscoll
VISIT THE BEULAH SHOPPE — EMBASSY TABLE RUNNER™
