“God always gives us what we need. We just have to know the difference between what we need and what we merely want.”

I was sitting with the women in the church in the Philippines last year, after class on a Sunday. They’d let me say some words about about faith and fear. Since there was time before the worship service began, we stayed together afterward and talked longer. They told me about being Christians and being women and what it’s like for them there.

One of the woman who spoke up is a widow raising two grandchildren. She knows about faith and fear. She talked about how in all her life God has provided for her, and she can clearly see that when she thinks about the difference between what she needs and what she wants. The idea of The Difference has helped me often since. Sometimes I remember her and then remember the lesson; sometimes it’s when I’m fixed on something I want that her words come to mind.

I’m still thinking this through, but maybe there’s a connection between what we want and what we fear. Maybe our wants are born out of our fears — fears of insignificance, fears of sickness and aging, fears of loneliness or other kinds of trouble. We want to make a big difference, to look great and be healthy, to be surrounded with people who think we’re doing well, or any other thing. But maybe God doesn’t always give us what we want because he’s there for the fear things.

And maybe trust is the other side of that, recognizing real needs and how they’re being taken care of. Then that leads to contentment which, perhaps, is faith in disguise.

Fear or faith? Want or need? We just have to know The Difference.