Thursday, May 7, 2009

Unexpected Gifts

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in Heaven give good gifts to those who askHim? Matt 7:11

I was maybe seven or eight years old and we had gone to stay with a close friend of my mothers who had just separated from her husband. Of these things, I had no understanding; it was a different world then where separation and divorce were a foreign language that most of us did not speak. We stayed in a motel with that friend and her daughter who was my age. For me, it was exciting, staying in a motel with a kidney-shaped pool. While I liked her daughter, she was also very boring; she did not want to go swimming, so I couldn't either. Then, I was told, we were going to a berry farm. I could think of nothing more mind-numbing than a berry farm where I would watch endless jars of jam being filled and labeled. I whined and moaned about yet another one of the tedious adventures that adults seemed to find so exciting. I complained and pleaded all the way to this place, youthfully insensitive to the feelings of the little family with us. Until we got to the berry farm; Knotts Berry Farm. In trying to keep it a surprise for me, my mother had not told me that the days of canning jellies and jams were long gone replaced by ferris wheels and rollercoasters. I never could have imagined it. 
Even though it is a distant, it is a powerful reminder that although God has not directly told me where He is taking me, it is not necessarily the droll place I expect as I file in prayer complaint after complaint on my way there; it may well be a better place than I ever could imagine. 

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