Let's Not Forget This Little Answer to Prayer

Sometimes we can pray so many prayers and wonder if God ever answers or even hears any of them. I have a story that proves that he does both. I've been wanting to record this little story ever since it happened but busyness kept getting in the way. Most of you know the story because you're in it, but it's worth being reminded of it.

Way back when, in the afternoon after our last potluck, we had a planning meeting. We didn't get it started off right; there was no prayer before the planning got going. The agenda eventually took us to the complicated issue of how to handle gifts for youth, and that's what it stayed: complicated. We (at least I) couldn't get my head around all the options: siblings that came to church, siblings that didn't come to church, youth that only came on Wednesdays, youth that came on Sundays, etc. The discussion was going around in circles and the whole thing was getting frustrating.

Somewhere in the midst of that, Chalyse said we could pray about it. Then some time after that I made the executive decision to move on in the agenda and leave the problem unresolved. When we got through the rest of the stuff, we finally did pray, including a prayer against the cloud of confusion surrounding the youth gift issue.

At that point I thought it was worth a shot to broach the topic one more time. And all of a sudden, it wasn't confusing anymore. We quickly narrowed everything down to two similar options and left it at that.

This sudden clarity was no coincidence, so don't let yourself think that it was. God answered our prayers!

(By the way, in case you were wondering, every youth that comes to church, whether on Sunday or Wednesday, will get a gift this year. Youth that don't, won't.)