Generalities and Specifics

Each day lately is so busy.  You'd think I'd have a lot to blog about and yet...

Today I was struck again with the mystery of prayer and wanted to come home and write a blog about it. But I just read again my post from 12 days ago and realized I wrote pretty much the same thing then.  How can that be?

I am watching the prayers fill up our prayer wall.  I've already removed over 500 of these prayers and replaced them with new pictures of children so more people can participate.  Volunteers and staff are encouraged to each take a picture from the prayer wall, turn it over and write a prayer for the child on the back, and pin it back on the wall.

I read these prayers and once again am in awe of that mystery of prayer.  People are writing and praying prayers for children they don't know and most likely will never meet, yet our sovereign God who knows each of them hears and answers.

Again today I marvel at the way God takes my general prayers and answers them specifically.  Today I had the privilege of talking with a volunteer who flew to Baltimore from Massachusetts.  She detailed all the delays and foibles that occurred step by step on her trip and told how God worked for her in each instance.  "It was like God parted the waters for me," she said.

I told her how I'd been praying general prayers for safe travel for volunteers and our gracious God answered her specific needs.  I didn't know her needs.  How could I?  But God knew and answered.

When we stopped to pray over the boxes today I told the story of being in Colombia in May and attending a church service where 70 children graduated from The Greatest Journey--Operation Christmas Child's discipleship program.  Prior to the shoebox distribution last spring this church had never had more than four children in attendance.  On the day of this graduation alone, 25 people (family and friends of the child graduates) gave their lives to Jesus.   I recalled last year when we sent boxes to Colombia from the processing center.  I remember how we prayed that God would draw children to Himself.  Then six months later I was able to see God's answers to those prayers with my own eyes.  How great is our God!

So, today, we all put our hands on those boxes and prayed again--this time for boxes being sent to Honduras.  We prayed in generalities.

But God is already answering in specifics.  Those prayed-over boxes contain answers not only to our prayers but also to the prayers of children and parents and pastors in Honduras.

So I will keep praying my poorly crafted prayers and trusting our detail-oriented faithful God to answer them in His specific way.