“God Is So Good!”
“Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
Natasha writes:
My sister’s wedding ceremony in Australia went smoothly. Everyone was enjoying the yummy food at the afternoon tea, and the bridal party had started having some photos in front of the church. Then my mum froze. “Did I lock the car?? Do you remember if I locked the car?” My fiance said that my mum had locked it, but she had him check anyway. Minutes later he was back. “It was locked, they smashed a window - everything is gone! Nat’s bag is gone - her passport is gone, her laptop is gone, your bags are all gone!”
Surely, I thought, he was joking.
I was suspended in this odd sense of surrealism and reality. My passport was gone and I had to be on a plane back to the USA in less than 20 hours so that I could get back to work, and settle on our house - due to be purchased just 2 days after we got back.
People started yelling that we needed to call the police, my uncle started freaking out about my passport being gone and how I needed to call the Department of Foreign Affairs and Travel (DFAT), the photographer was getting antsy about me needing to be with the rest of the bridal party so we could leave for photos, and others ran back to the car to see if they could establish what exactly was missing, and see if anything was discarded nearby.
We couldn’t find a phone book, so someone said that they would call directory assistance. Then we couldn’t figure out whether anyone had actually called the police. I had this weird sense that I would get everything back, but I had to also understand the gravity that I didn’t have my key back into the United States and in order to get back I would have to somehow contact DFAT and the US Consulate - on a Saturday.
In all the madness, I knew there was only one thing that would be have more power of getting my stuff back than the police. “We need to pray.”
A number of my family and friends gathered in a circle, and my grandfather prayed. During the prayer, my aunt had a vision that our bags were discarded in an alleyway nearby. She called my uncle who was searching for them. “But we’ve already looked down the streets, in the neighbors yards, and we’ve talked to people.” She insisted they were in an alleyway, so he went and looked again.
It must have been about ten or twenty minutes later when we heard the news.
“We found your bag! And they didn’t find your laptop, your mobile, or your passport!! They also didn’t take your purse - it was left underneath something in the car!” I have a secret compartment in my bag where I had my laptop and passport - they rummaged all through my bag and didn’t find them. Oddly, my phone was in that bag too (I don’t even remember putting it there) but they didn’t seem to see that either.
I don’t know what kind of mess I would have been in if I didn’t get my things back - we would have had to relock our interest rate, we’d have had to postpone our house purchase, and the seller would have had to somehow postpone their house purchase too.
I was praising God the entire way back to the USA. God knew my deepest need. He is so good!
Please note that the views expressed in this story are not necessarily the views of the American Bible Society. Story posted on November 21st, 2008 and filed under God's Love, Hope, Praise, Your Stories, Christian Families, God's Sovereignty.
November 21st, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Dear Natasha:
Your beautifully written real life drama appears to me a modern version of William Shakespeare’s play, “All’s Well That Ends Well.”
This reminds me of my own “God knew my deepest need. He is so good!” experience.
It was our first day of winter recess in 1960. My classmate drove me from Yale University Divinity School, New Haven, to New York City. My wedding gown and evening dress tailored-made by my loving family in Hong Kong were packed in a box in the car. The President of Union Theological Seminary was to officiate my wedding with my Columbia University Research Scientist groom-to-be four days later at the James Memorial Chapel of the Seminary.
We parked the car in front of a Chinese Restaurant for a quick bite of Chinese foods.
Lo and behold, when we returned to the car half an hour later, the car was broken into, and my boxes of all the wedding dresses, etc., were gone!
The policeman nearby walked blocks around with us to see if anything was discarded around ….
It was truly a miracle, totally unexplainable to me even as of this day, that the box which contained my wedding dresses was unopened, intact beside a garbage dumpster two blocks away!
Everything else lost we could laugh at then as gratuity to the needy culprit.
“We need to pray,” indeed.
“Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you” (Mark 11:24);
“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” (John 15:7); and
“Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:3).
Thank you.
May GOD ALL MIGHTY Bless you and yours inestimably and infinitely;
GODSPEED, always and forevermore!
Mary Sun.