Last week, I bought a bunkbed for my flat.
There is a significant story lying within even that simple sentence, but that is for another time. What makes that statement relavent to this story is that this bed was the first piece of furniture that I've purchased in the entire time I've lived in Latvia.¹
When I moved to Riga last year, the flat was almost completely empty. The few items that were there would hardly be worth mentioning in any other context: there was one old, sheet-covered armchair. One rickety kitchen chair. A small desk-like contraption. And two or three other small pieces of furniture that had also been abandoned due to their ramshackle appearance and rickety construction by the previous denizens of the flat.¹
But there were no couches. No chairs or credenzas, no bookcases, bureaus or beds. There was a room we called the kitchen, but it was completely bare: walls and windows were all you would find. I slept on an air mattress for the first couple weeks, until a kind friend donated a bed, which instantly became the best piece of furniture in the flat.
It was, for all intents and purposes, indoor camping.³
Meanwhile, in Norway, some friends of friends heard about Latvia, and the opportunity to be involved in what God is doing here in some very practical ways. And, of most import to this narrative tale, about the need for furniture to fill this large, echoey, basically empty flat.⁴
And so, at the beginning of June last year, through a series of fortuitously timed that you couldn't have orchestrated if you wanted to, a ship sailed from Norway to Riga, where it delivered a truckload - literally - of furniture. Most of it was slightly used, but all of it was still perfectly usable.
And here's the kicker: it was all free. Not one penny, centim or kroner was paid for a single piece of furniture, or for the transport of it to Riga, or for customs or duties or import taxes or anything else.⁵
I'm not sure what to call that except a miracle.
After the nation of Israel crossed the Jordan river into the land which had been promised them, their leader Joshua made them take twelve stones from the riverbed - which they had just walked across - and arrange them into a memorial on the other side. The idea was that when their children's children asked why there was a weird pile of stones sitting there, it would be a natural way to introduce the story of God's miraculous provision. Of delivering his people to the land he had promised them, even going so far as to dry up a river in flood season so they, and all their goods - beds, chairs, kitchens, cushions - could safely travel to the other side.⁶
I don't have any stone memorials. But I live in a flat full of furniture, where every single piece screams out, "God did something here." Every cup, every lamp, every chair is a testament to his provision.
As it turns out, couch cushions can be a memorial just as much as rocks pried from a just-dried riverbed can.
(And they're far more comfortable).
(And they're far more comfortable).
¹Small clarification, upon further reflection: I have been involved in the purchase of a stove, a refrigerator, and a washing machine. But since those are technically appliances, and since saying that the bed was the fourth piece of "furniture" I've acquired for the flat doesn't sound anywhere near as good, I'm going with this interpretation.
²And have all been subsequently abandoned by the current resident (me).
³It might sound worse than it was, especially since I enjoy camping. But cooking on a hotplate and sitting on a rickety chair grows wearisome even for me after a while.
⁴My friends who own my flat also wanted to see it furnished, so they told their friends about the need. Word quickly spread, and soon everything from a renovated kitchen to an unused office to random chairs and beds were being offered, along with practically everything else you could possibly want to fill an empty flat. And now these friend-of-friends are just friends, which is perhaps the best part of this whole story.
⁵There was a real possibility that the officials at the shipping dock were going to reject the shipment or demand an extortionary sum of money to accept it because they had lost the paperwork for it. Yes, you read that right.
⁶From Joshua 3 and 4
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