God's Economy

A couple of months ago I was at my hairdressers and as I was leaving she said, "God doesn't always give you what you want, but he always gives you what you need." A flush began in my innermost being and didn't stop until it hit the roots of my hair and all twenty nailbeds as I thought about all the things God seems to think I need. I have been abundantly blessed over and over again, and since that time I have discovered rafts of new neccessities I couldn't have imagined then. I was raised to head off to Africa and eat insects while living in a dung hut. This was the ideal Christian. All a real Christian needed was God and a few very basic basics. What am I to make of the real Christian life I'm living? Have I missed it somewhere? Every step I took, I took expecting to be in Africa any minute. I sought God's will as best I could, and here I am, evidently an extravagantly needy person despite my best intentions.
I've always known I struggle not to be like the unforgiving servant. Personally, I don't think he beat up his fellow servant because he was greedy. I think the poor sap was just trying to scrape all his resources together in the hopes that someday he'd be able to pay it all back. I imagine him arriving home from his close shave, and instead of saying "Wow, I can't believe my good fortune"; I see him feeling desperately ashamed, and pulling out his list of assets in order to draw up a plan for repayment. I see him swearing off steak in favor of hamburger, cutting cable off permanently without any resorting to satelite, and calculating how long he can make the old station wagon last if he puts in a new engine instead of purchasing another vehicle. The unforgiving servant would have felt much more comfortable in the dung hut than in the nice rancher he immediately put on the market.
If there really is no way to pay it all back or even to adequately express my gratitude, then what am I to do? Being the guilt ridden former fundamentalist that I am, I remember the parable of the talents, so burying all my assets in a hole won't cut it, but how on earth do I double the master's investment? I mean have you ever really tried to think it out just how much the tab is, no matter how simple your life. Gahndi was in over his head. There is however, the saving grace of fundamentalism--they made me learn all of the Bible not just part of it. You soon find out that there's always the antithetical premise somewhere else in that amazing book. In this case when it's all too much and I know I can never work it out, I remember that the farmer's seeds grow no matter what he does. All the farmer can do is provide the right conditions, and hope. The growing of the seed to maturity is God's business, and He brings the DNA to it's full expression. If it works for an ear of corn, it'll work for me. The corn has no idea what it's doing there and what it will be, it just grows. That's where I'm at. All I can do is watch myself unfold, needy little debtor that I am. I sure hope He knows what he's doing. He doesn't seem like a very smart venture capitalist to me.