Joy among the tax forms

 So I was doing my tax return, as usual at the last minute. As a self-employed person, I never get a refund, and always have to pay double employment tax since it's not shared by an employer, so the government doesn't get my payment until the last few hours before the deadline. I did all my business bookkeeping in the week of Christmas, so in mid-April, it's just inputting it to the online tax service.

I'd saved the 1099 miscellaneous income forms and the charity receipts that came in January, and there was one I was dreading to open because it was from a financial institution to which I was indebted when my father died. Time's up, though, so I had to look at the numbers to deal with the situation.

 "Debt discharged." Not paid by his estate, not charged to me (as I thought). No interest as I feared. Just erased. This is one of those "too big to fail" banks, and they just don't do that. And yet, that's what the letter said. Debt discharged, and the amount.

That's not a bank thing. That's a God thing. I can't and won't tell details in a public blog because no one but me has a right to that information. But when my father died several years ago, there was no inheritance; not one item of antique furniture, family heirlooms, or anything from my father's and mother's estates came to me from my dad's second wife. Nothing except this shared debt. It deepened the grief at losing my dad, knowing that he didn't leave a letter or phone call, didn't bless us, didn't make a will or provision for my brother and me, but put everything in his wife's name. A not-nice person who constantly undermined relationships and treated us badly at every turn. 

"A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children." Prov. 13:22

But my *other* Father made a silk purse out of a sow's ear. He took my burden onto his own yoke. And he's given me hope. He's proved himself as the Father who has an inheritance for me--both someday, in heaven, and now, in his kingdom. Debt discharged. I'm free.

"You, O God, sent abroad plentiful rain; You confirmed Your inheritance when it was parched and weary." Psalm 68:9