Philippians 4:13: Hungry and Well Fed

I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

Philippians 4:13 (NIV)

Hungry and Well Fed

Two winters she ate what hadn’t sold. She doesn’t tell it. The second was worse than the first, because by then she knew how long a winter is.

The stall does well now. The woman on the next pitch leaves a box on her table at the end of most Saturdays, things that won’t keep till Tuesday, and she takes it and says thanks and carries it to the car. It took her about four years to be able to do that without making a speech out of it.

I can do all this through him who gives me strength. Paul says what all this covers, and it’s a list about food and money. Well fed and hungry. Living in plenty and in want. He says he has learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, and the strength in the sentence is strength for that.

I had this one wrong for a long time, and the word that corrected me was learned. Contentment came to Paul the way anything learned comes, through repetition he didn’t sign up for. He knows what it is to be in need. He knows what it is to have plenty. Both of those are conditions a man lives inside for months at a time, with no idea when they’ll end.

The address matters as much as the list. He writes this to a church that had just sent him help. He tells them he rejoiced greatly that they’d renewed their concern for him, that it was good of them to share in his troubles, and that when he was in Thessalonica they had sent him aid more than once. So the strength that comes from Christ and the supplies that came from Philippi sit in the same letter, written by the same man, with no embarrassment between them.

Take him out of the sentence and it turns into a boast about how much a person can stand. He is the only reason it isn’t one, and Paul puts him in the same line as the hunger.

The box goes in the back of the car with the trestles. Some weeks there’s nothing in it she needs, and she takes it then too.