God's provision & His timing

How often I have wondered why, when, how, and if. Why did this or that happen? When is it going to be done? How will I ever pay for it? If it is intended at all.

Several months ago my car started acting up. It made this horrible sound when it first started up. So I took it in to a mechanic. He looked under the hood and listened to it run. Then he said he didn't think it was in the engine, sounded more like the muffler. I could make an appointment to have it looked at more carefully. OK, if it seemed to be the muffler, I would take it to a muffler shop. The guy there also looked and listened, saying it was a faulty baffle in the muffler. It was OK to to drive, provided I didn't take it too far out of town. He gave me an estimate of $265 to fix the problem. Basically a new muffler.

Right about that same time we received a backlog (6 mths worth) of medical bills from the VA. They hadn't billed us earlier because we had over-paid in a previous year and the only way they could bill us was to rectify their books. Basically they needed to cut us a check for about $30 before their computer would generate a bill. So they did, and we have been playing catchup since.

On September 30 I turned 70 1/2. By law, I have now to draw 1/20th of my IRA savings. So last week the first annual payment arrived in the mail. So I paid off the last of the VA bill and took my car into AAMCO (by now the transmission was acting sluggish) to have the transmission fluid checked. I had had the oil changed and the other fluids changed about a month ago, but they didn't check this fluid. AAMCO offered to run a computer diagnostic free of charge, so I took the car in yesterday. The diagnostic indicated that the transmission is fine. The culprit seems to be the catalytic converter. It is partially clogged and putting pressure on those baffles. I will take the car back in on Tuesday afternoon for servicing. They will run another diagnostic before I bring it home.

In the Lord's time, all things work together. Money, diagnosis/service, and medical bills all came together. It has to be His provision, His timing. Thank you Lord.