Stats

Jack has been having a rough time lately. And look, I get it. I bet it’s hard to be twelve months old! I bet it’s frustrating to be stuck inside a body that won’t move the way you want it to with fingers hopelessly incapable of fine motor skills and a mouth that simply refuses to say all the words you’re thinking! Imagine giant people carrying you around all over the place, wrapping you up in whatever clothes they want to and then plopping you down on the floor, sticking some toys before your face then walking away… you’d probably go bonkers too! But then, you can’t say, “Hey, giant people! Come back in this room and hand me one of those tiny orange crackers that looks like a fish!” because you can’t talk. On top of all that, you’re painfully making teeth all the time. Wow.

Jack is about the easiest baby ever, but sometimes he’s just frustrated. Sometimes he just cries. On Monday I was hanging out with him and he was having a hard time. I kept telling him that everything was going to be okay and wondering if he had any idea what I was trying to communicate with him. His little brow just furrowed and the tears came running down his smooth little face and into his open, crying mouth. I looked at him in between cries and asked, “What is it, bro? What’s wrong? What do you need me to do?” He didn’t answer because he doesn’t know how to speak English yet, but I wished he could have. My father’s heart would have done just about anything to placate the little guy in those moments if he could have just asked!

Lately I have been watching God answer a lot of prayers and they have been specific answers to specific prayers. For a few years now I have been writing my prayers down in a book simply because it helps me stay focused and I’ve started to realize something cool. As the ink that lines out those prayers leaves my pen and sticks to the page, it often does so in haste or in distress. Often times my prayers are the illegible scratching of a worried or even panicked heart. I leave the indecipherable scrawl on the page along with the weight of the problem and then have the peace to go about my day. Lately though I have seen some of those problems from the page solved before my eyes! I have watched God move and simply answer my prayers just as I wrote them down in desperate hope that morning! I find myself saying things like, “Whoa! That’s exactly what I prayed would happen!” Then I go back to the journal and find that prayer staring me in the face, only it has changed shape now. It’s as if my feverishly scribbled mess transforms over time into a written record of the faithfulness of God.

Our Lord’s brother James said, “You do not have because you do not ask God.” Now, I am not saying that writing down your prayers creates a mathematical correlation or contractual relationship whereby God is bound to do whatever you may fancy. I do not pretend to understand how the sovereign will of God meets up with my anxious prayers. The only thing I do know is that He has done it before… I have watched Him do exactly what I’ve begged Him, in His great mercy, to do. I have watched Him turn my frantic and forlorn hopes into His own shining stat sheet… a testimony of His merciful goodness. We can’t say what He will do and what He will not, but if He doesn’t, let it not be because we didn’t ask.