Devotionals
It was 1980-something. I was somewhere around the fourth or fifth grade, not that it mattered much, because it was summer and I was at church camp having the time of my life. One of my favorite things to do was jump off the diving board in the large camp pool, touch my feet on the bottom and swim back to the top. One of the times when I jumped I didn’t quite get the whole way to the bottom, so I was unable to kick off to get back to the top. I kicked and kicked my legs trying to get to the surface. But without the extra push I was moving upward slowly and losing air quickly. I remember looking up and seeing a few feet of water remaining above my head and feeling my lungs burning and screaming for air. For some odd reason, I decided to open my mouth and take a breath. But where there should have been water rushing into my lungs, it was air! I swam to the surface, climbed out of the pool and sat down pondering the miracle that had gone unnoticed by all but me.
It was 1990-something. I was in the middle of my sophomore year of high school and had just moved with my parents to Reno, Nevada. I was having a hard time adjusting to the new school and was feeling very alone. In my prayer journal one night I prayed on whim (and half-joking) “God please give me a friend—or an angel would be cool—like in those books.” (I had been reading An Angel in my Backpack and An Angel in my Locker.) So the next day I went to my guidance counselor who set me up with a senior “buddy” to show me around and help ensure that I got settled into the school. She was a Christian, very nice and her friends welcomed me into their group. As I went to pray again that night to thank God for my new friend, I looked at the entry from the previous night and laughed. Only then did it occur to me that God had answered my prayer in more ways than one. My new friend’s name: Angel.
Over the years I have kept many journals. Every once and a while I will go back through and reread where I have been and what has happened and see just how far I have come. The one phrase that keeps resurfacing in entry after entry in journal after journal is this: “Why do I doubt?” I have read the biblical examples of how God provided. I have heard countless tales of how God has come through in the lives of others. I even have a myriad of journals full of accounts of how God has provided for me in my own life! And yet, time and time again, I begin to worry and fret and wonder how things are going to work out. And as things work out and fall into place I once more pen into my journal “Why do I doubt?”
It was during my senior year in high school. Fall. Chilled wind. Colored leaves. My health was failing. Headaches. Nausea. Vertigo. Doctor’s visits. Cat scans. MRIs. Nothing. Trying to survive my senior year, complete an internship, work a retail job and figure out what was wrong with me, I became overwhelmed and depressed. Every morning I would pray “Lord, I give you all my worries and concerns.” Yet before lunchtime rolled around I would be all stressed out again. The one day when I was listening to my The Waiting CD playing “Hands in the Air,” it struck me. I would give everything over to God, but when I couldn’t see Him doing anything about it, I would take them back and try to do it on my own again! But that’s the funny thing about hands. Not only do we need to open our hands and give all our needs and concerns to God, but we need to keep them open. For only open hands can receive anything. And though I still doubt from time to time, I have come to see that God is faithful. He is our Jehovah Jireh—the God who Provides!
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