It's Raining...It's Pouring

     One morning, as I was preparing to go on my daily walk with my daughter, Adeline, I quickly looked out the window. It had been raining early on but it seemed to be clearing up now, even though the sky was still a little cloudy. Oh well, I thought to myself, I will just bring an umbrella. Just in case.
     A few minutes into the walk, it started to drizzle. Nothing to worry about, I told myself, just a passing cloud. However, as I approached the hill that marked the halfway point on my walk, it started to downpour. And it was at that point that I realized how hard it is to push a stroller uphill while holding an umbrella to keep yourself and your child dry -it is, in fact, impossible.
     "God, please make the rain stop!" It wasn't a prayer of faith I had uttered, more of a desperate plea, like the one the disciples made when they woke Jesus up in the middle of the storm: "Jesus, why won't you do something! We're drowning!"
     As soon as the words had left my lips, and before I could take another breath, I heard a voice behind me: "Do you need a ride?" I turned around to see a mom in a minivan who had stopped by the side of the road. She had a car seat for Adeline to sit in and a trunk big enough I could just throw the stroller in without bothering to fold it up. "Yes, I just need to get back home!" The mom helped me load Adeline and the stroller in her van and drove us back to our apartment. Of course, as soon as we got back inside, the rain stopped and the sun shone brightly the rest of the day!
     Later that day, it struck me, that if God can hear my plea of the moment, can't He also hear the prayer requests I have been bringing before His throne consistently and purposefully? Sometimes, I find myself thinking that it's no use to keep praying about a certain matter or that maybe it is not important enough for God to care about -since He hasn't done anything about it yet. But that isn't the case, is it. God hears our every prayer, our every cry of the heart, our every plea. We know He doesn't always answer how we want Him to or even answer right away. Yet, in His good planning and in His good timing, we will see that God chose to do what was best (Rom 8:28).