George Müller's Empty Cupboard

In 1838, George Müller sat at a breakfast table in Bristol, England, with three hundred orphans and not a single crumb of food in the house. The cupboards were bare. The milk jugs were dry. Every human calculation said this was the end of his experiment in faith.

Müller bowed his head and prayed aloud: "Father, we thank You for what You are going to give us to eat."

A knock came at the door. The local baker stood outside, explaining he had been unable to sleep the night before and felt compelled to bake fresh bread for the orphanage. Minutes later, a milk cart broke down directly in front of the building. The driver, unable to make his delivery route, offered all his milk to the children before it spoiled.

Over the course of his life, Müller housed over ten thousand orphans in Bristol, and he never once made a public appeal for funds. He simply prayed. More than fifty thousand specific answers to prayer were recorded in his journals.

Jeremiah draws a sharp line between two kinds of lives. The one who trusts in human strength is like a scrub bush in the desert — parched, isolated, unable to see good when it comes. But the one who trusts in the Lord is like a tree planted by water, stretching its roots toward the stream, green even in drought.

Müller's empty cupboard became God's proving ground. The Almighty does not fail the heart that leans wholly on Him.