Angels & Answered Prayers

You Prayed for What? 

by Sarah Hemingway

As a Marine family, we were living in Quantico, Virginia and had received orders to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Our girls were five and seven, our son was three, and I was pregnant with our fourth child. Tom and I got a sitter for the children and then headed to North Carolina to search for a house to buy. Our children were praying that we’d find the right house, and our Bible study group was lifting us up in prayer.

After two days of looking at houses, we still hadn’t felt the peace we’d experienced in previous house hunts. Time was running out. Our realtor had been trying to convince us to at least look at a particular house she thought would be perfect, but we’d nixed it because it had a pool in the back yard. With such young children, we were afraid we’d have no back yard play area and were concerned that a little one might wander into the pool unnoticed. Finally we agreed to take a look, and of course, we found the peace that said, “This is it.” As it turned out, the pool area was off to the side of a large back yard, and it was enclosed by a solid five-foot tall redwood fence. With a large lock! You couldn’t even see the pool because of the fence. Suddenly Tom and I became little kids ourselves as we imagined the fun we’d all have with this pool. We’d never imagined this turn of events, but it was perfect in every way.

Driving back to Quantico, we talked about our offer being accepted, and we decided that we wouldn’t mention the pool to the children. After all, the topic had never come up before, and what fun it would be to surprise them when, after all the packing and saying goodbye, they arrived at a home with a pool—in June! It would be only a month or so, and we could hold out for that long.

At last we pulled into the driveway, tired but happy and eager to see the children. The girls raced out to the car. “Did you find a house?” they asked.

“Yes, we did, and you’re really going to like it,” I replied enthusiastically.

“Does it have a pool?” Laura asked.

“Yeah, does it, Mommy, does it?” five-year-old Beki piped in.

Tom and I could hardly believe our ears. “It’s really a nice house,” Tom hedged.

“But does it have a pool?” the girls insisted. They were almost giddy with excitement.

After a wink from Tom, I answered, “Yes, it has a pool!”

At that point the girls began dancing around the yard, whooping and jumping up and down. Then they raced back over to us and Laura blurted out the rest of the story. “Mom and Dad, when you left we made a secret with each other to ask Jesus to give us a house with a swimming pool. We didn’t tell anybody, we just kept asking him.”

Tom and I stood there dumbfounded. A few weeks later we were on our way to Ft. Bragg, and for four years we had enormous fun with that house and pool, both as a family and with neighbors and friends. What a testimony of faith our own children had been to us.

So many of our family’s faith stories came in transitions from one duty station to another. We often laugh about the many “moving experiences” we’ve had with the Lord. It was seven years after the pool experience when we left the Marine Corps and moved to Colorado to take leadership of a Christian conference center high in the mountains. For the first year, our family of six lived in a small log chalet on the property. That’s when we pondered the case of the missing hinges.

“I’ve looked everywhere I can think of, and they’re still nowhere to be found,” I reported, as the first week turned into the second and then the third. It was a frigid January day outside, with snow piled everywhere, along with empty boxes from our recent move. We’d unpacked and sorted everything we’d brought, but our large refrigerator sat in the kitchen, with its doors stored out on the porch. We had the fridge and we had the doors, but no one had been able to find the hinges that connected them.

At first it was an adventure, transplanting four kids and a dog across the country in mid-winter. As a military family we were no strangers to changes in environments and locations. Once again we were in the business of settling into a routine, getting the children checked into schools, and making our new nest as cozy as possible. We were mastering the sharing of one bathroom amongst six people, and with the resilience of any large family, we found flexibility the order of the day.

Still, the chalet came furnished with only a small refrigerator, the kind you see in hotel rooms these days. So we’d brought our own to the party, even though it took up most of the kitchen. Day after day I’d searched for those hinges, enlisting the help of the children and my husband Tom. We went through boxes and wrapping papers two and three times, making sure the hinges hadn’t been missed in unpacking. We’d looked in the refrigerator drawers, on the shelves, and in all of the kitchen utensil containers. We’d even searched the bedrooms, in case they’d landed in one of those familiar miscellaneous boxes. Now we were facing the reality that those hinges might be lost, and replacing them in tiny little Buena Vista, Colorado would take weeks.

That night after a hearty meal of beef stew and a recounting of the day’s events, we sat around the table discussing our move and the mystery of those silly hinges. Finally I suggested, let’s all hold hands and pray about it together. (We’d prayed separately, but not as a group.) One by one we asked our heavenly Father to show us where those hinges might be. Some reminded him of how he found lost sheep, while others talked about his care for us. There were kindergarten prayers, middle school prayers, and grown-up prayers as we sat around the table holding hands. As the last one finished praying, the strangest thing happened. My eyes were closed, but I saw a picture of the hinges in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator. They were in a plastic bag.

Without saying a word, I immediately got up from the table and walked to the refrigerator. I knew I’d looked in those drawers dozens of times, but I figured I needed to follow that picture. I opened the drawer. Empty. Yet I had been so sure; the picture had been so clear. I ran my hand over every square inch inside and above the drawer. I gasped! In the very back was a plastic bag, taped to the top of the corner—totally out of sight. And in that bag . . . refrigerator hinges! Well, I wouldn’t have believed that a family of six in a little cabin in Colorado would dance and shout and sing and praise the Lord over refrigerator hinges, but there we were, once again realizing God’s care in the most mundane of dilemmas.

 Praying into God’s Love

by Pringle Franklin

My teenage son comes into the house from school, bent over under the weight of his bulging book bag. His hands are overflowing with a change of clothes, extra text books, and a sports bag of equipment. He can hardly get through the door.

“Let me help you with that,” I say, rushing over and extending my hand. He pushes the thick science and algebra textbooks at me, along with an unruly pile of worn clothes.

“Thank you,” he says, standing up straight and catching his breath. I was happy to help, glad I was there.

Later that evening, this same, beloved child calls for me. He is upstairs in his room, doing homework. I am chopping onions and prepping ingredients before cooking dinner.

“Mom!” he yells down. “Is my science book in the kitchen?”

“Yes,” I holler back.

“Will you bring it up to me? Please?”

The Chemistry text lies on the kitchen counter, not five feet away. I could wash the onions from my hands, grab the book and bound up the stairs. But I don’t. He should have remembered to take the book upstairs. He needs to feel the pain of going to fetch it.

“No, I’m busy in the kitchen,” I shout upward, toward the open door of his room. “Come down and get it yourself.”

Two requests from the same child can bring two opposite results. This simple example illustrates how God answers our prayers. Sometimes, He is happy to fix things, find things, mend things, and shower us with miracles. Other times, He withholds our request because it would not serve His long-term purpose.

As creatures in the present tense, our perspective is limited to here and now. Missing the cosmos view, we feel confused: why did God answer this prayer but ignore that one? Why does He move mountains for some people and pile up mountains in front of others? Despite how He seems at times, God is not mercurial. When you entreat Him to act upon your behalf, He will always respond with perfect love. If you tap into this love, if you abide closely with Him throughout your day, if you sit still long enough to sense His all-surpassing delight, you will hold a key in your hand.

Let me give you an example from my life.

About three years ago, I was flying in a charter plane when a sudden thunderstorm blew into our flight path. The tiny plane felt like a roller coaster ride, with stomach-lurching drops and falls. Several of us screamed and squirmed in our seats during the 20-minute ordeal.  After our pilot managed an emergency landing, I thought the dreadful experience was behind me. About a month later, I flew again on a large commercial jet. It was just a normal flight on a sunny day. Yet, every bump, every rattle, every strange noise plunged me into an anxiety attack. I was gripping the hand rails, praying with my eyes closed to calm myself. I had never been a nervous flier but now, I could not shake this suffocating fear, and I began to dread flying on every flight for the next two years.

Then, the worst happened. On a 3-hour flight from Albuquerque to Atlanta, we were within 20 minutes of landing when the pilot made an overhead announcement. Rough weather ahead, he said. The flight crew needed to sit down and strap on their seat belts. My blood pressure soared as waves of panic washed over me. I was trapped on a flying cylinder at 22,000 feet with no way out. I had to hold myself back from shrieking.

Go inward! I squeezed shut my eyes and began to pray, concentrating on how much God loved me. As I focused on God and his tremendous tenderness, I sensed that the Lord wanted to deliver me from the anxiety. So I prayed, on the basis of His great love, that He would send His angels to carry the plane and protect it. I kept my eyes closed, imagining our plane in the hands of two angels – one cradling the nose and the other carrying the tail –  who would not let anything destroy or even jostle us. As my mind kept visualizing this, my heartbeat normalized; my hands relaxed their death grip on the chair. After a few minutes of intense prayer, I realized that the ride was extremely smooth. My seat was not even shaking. I exhaled deeply, feeling again the warmth of God’s love. Before I knew it, the plane’s wheels had touched down on the runway in Atlanta.

We had not hit a single bump. I wondered what the rest of the people on the plane were thinking as they gathered their belongings from the overhead bins. In my heart, I was singing praises to my Heavenly Father.

Rest assured, we are God’s beloved. If you are in Christ, abide in Him. Pour out your heart and expect God to answer you in perfect love. We are called to submit our will to God. There are prayers whose answers we will not find easy to accept. Yet many times, if we pray into the loving heart of God, we will be amazed by the results.

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9