One
of my fears is that in my prayers I am ‘putting God to the test.’ Sort of, ‘Show
us, God’. I am aware of the somewhat
related danger of using God as the ‘great
vending machine in the sky’, where we pray only when we need something,
thinking that if we put in a prayer the answer we want comes out. I try to stay away from that danger, not
always with success. I do try to follow
the ‘ACTS’ model of prayer: Adoration; Confession; Thanksgiving; Supplication.
It is based on the model Jesus gave us in the Lord’s Prayer. What comforts me
is that Jesus prayed for outcomes too, hence his inclusion of ‘give us our
daily bread’ and so forth.
In
the end I believed that it was right to ask you to pray with all of those who
were praying for Tony to receive a new liver.
In the course of several days Tony’s family was blessed with answers to
prayers. First there was a shower of gifts, a downpour of love gifts, in the
middle of a rare April snowstorm, which will relieve the family’s financial
pressures. The women who organized the fundraiser saw their very hard work get
rewarded in ways I am sure that exceeded even their dreams.
The
second answer to prayers came a few days later when a liver became available
and it was a match for Tony’s body. The
fact that a team of medical professionals can work 12 or so hours straight on a
task which requires exact precision and unparalleled focus is another feat in
which people with spiritual eyes can see God at work. The surgery was
complicated, and there are many steps in the healing process yet to come. Still, the hundreds, maybe thousands of prayers
for Tony received God’s resounding ‘YES’!
It
was a lifetime’s worth of miracles in the course of a week. I thank God for
giving us this glimpse into his magisterial power and abiding love, for showing
us that God does care for one person and one family in this way, and for
letting us be reminded that God still uses human instruments, like you, to pray
dreams into miracles.
To
God be the glory. Great things God has done! Amen, Amen, Amen.
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