Unexpected Treasures in God’s Yes, No, and Wait

I love to hear my four year old sing.

Lately here favorite song is a tune she learned at VBS last summer. It goes like this:

My God is so great and so strong and so mighty,
There’s nothing my God cannot do.
The mountains are His, the rivers are His,
The stars are His handiwork, too.
My God is so great and so strong and so mighty,
There’s nothing my God cannot do…FOR YOU!

I just love the way she shouts “For you!” at the end. What a reminder that God is bigger than anything we can face.

Many years ago, when my first child was just a toddler, my husband and I didn’t have very much money. We definitely lived paycheck to paycheck with no room to spare.

One day near Christmas, I was standing in my kitchen looking over the counter at my daughter who was dancing in the next room. I was flipping through photos I’d just gotten back (remember the days of film?), when I realized my poor old camera was dying. All the pictures were dark.

I was sad.

I knew we could’t afford a new camera. But I wanted so desperately to capture my first child’s babyhood.

“If only…” I thought, “if only I had an extra $100, I could buy a nice camera.”

But I knew we didn’t have an extra $25, much less $100. So I kept my thoughts to myself. I didn’t even tell my husband, and I vowed to make do with our dying camera.

I forgot about that day until two weeks later.

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I checked the mail, and there was a letter from our church. I wasn’t expecting any official nursery or worship team business. I opened the letter.

It was a check.

For $100.

Exactly the amount I had longed for.

When my husband arrived home, I told him the entire story. We agreed to purchase a camera, and thanked God profusely.

Yes, God can and does provide in miraculous ways.

But What if He Doesn’t?

The above story is my favorite example of how God has provided miraculously in my life. But God doesn’t always answer my prayers with such a profound “yes!”

Sometimes I pray, and I feel like there is silence on the other end of the line. Do you know what I mean?

I struggle with this as much as the next person.

What does it mean?

Does it mean God isn’t big enough to handle my prayer request?

Not at all.

Sometimes there’s a better yes than the thing I’m asking for.

My husband and I struggled with getting pregnant. I had always imagined I’d have three kids. But after five years of infertility treatments, one miscarriage, and two healthy children, my husband and I decided we’d give up our desire for a third child and be thankful for the two we had.

Those five long years were full of heartache.

I was sad that I would never bear another child. I loved being pregnant! Maybe the child we lost to miscarriage was that third child we longed for so deeply.

Years passed. Jim and I were content with our family of four. Our son was almost eight, and we were about to say goodbye to the last of the baby equipment…his booster seat.

And then it happened. Grace came into our lives. And when I say Grace, I speak not only of my youngest daughter (named Grace), but of God’s miraculous grace that provides for us those things we don’t even know we need.

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Without telling the entire story, because that’s Grace’s story to tell, we ended up adopting our youngest as a toddler.

We went back to the baby equipment.

God blessed us with our third child.

All the years of heartache prepared us to say yes to a little girl who needed a home right away.

When we were struggling with infertility? I had no idea what the future would hold. I only knew I was miserable in the moment.

In hindsight, God knew what I needed to prepare me for the future. My husband and I needed to have considered adoption – to know what was involved, so we could say yes without taking too much time to think it over.

Only infertility could have prepared us so completely.

My God IS so great! He’s so great he sees a future that I cannot comprehend. He has a purpose in every yes, no, and wait. We can only see a small slice of the picture. God’s answers to our prayers depend on His view of the big picture…a picture we don’t – we can’t – fully understand.