A few years ago, myself and a group of friends were coming back from a road trip to Portland from Seattle when our 2002 Jeep broke down at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. We felt stuck, since know one new anything about cars, and we were still several hours from home. It was late at night, and we knew the likely hood of getting one of our friends in Seattle to drive down and fetch us was slim to none.
So, what did we do?
We prayed.
Yes, the most cliche of Christian answers to solve what seemed like an extremely minor worldly problem, in the grand scheme of things. But we prayed.
Not 30 seconds after we finished our prayer, we saw the door of the truck stop diner up the street fly open and a burly, bearded man walk out - a typical trucker if there ever was one. He looked at us from the door and immediately started walking our way. When he reached us, all he said was, “You guys look like you’re having some car trouble. Why don’t you try inserting the key into the outside, driver’s door lock and locking and unlocking it a couple times?”
As we all looked around at one another thinking, “There’s no way this works,” sure enough, it worked.
Immediately after the engine roared back to life, the guardian angel turned around to leave with a low-key, “Looks like that did the trick. Y’all be safe.”
It’s this moment that I hold onto as a pivotal anchor to my faith. A small, but truly answered prayer in the heat of the moment. Both unexplainable and explainable, but a moment that I refuse to chalk up to circumstance.
Event when it feels like God isn’t listening, shouldn’t listen or has better things to hear, He hears us.
-Cliff
Tim’s Note: “Even when it feels like God is absent, He is with us. He is always working, turning the world’s bad to His good.” - Tim Keller