YOU ask for it, HE will deliver it!!!!

Good evening and happy Sunday night, I pray that your day has been a great one, that you have had special time for yourself and that your "tank is full" Today has been a cold damp day here with snow off and on. We are forecast for more high winds tonight and tomorrow, please pray with me that the areas so ravaged by the winds on Thursday do not receive further damage. Millions of dollars of damage are being reported with some folks just getting power back this evening. 

In prayer this night I am asking special blessings for a very sweet friend who has lost someone very special to her and her family, a young man with a wife and two children. I ask God to comfort them with calm and peace in their hearts and knowledge that His promise is at hand. May they rest in calm knowing that they are not saying goodbye, they are saying until we meet again because we all know that we shall meet again in paradise.  Another angel has earned his wings and will now be preparing a place for his loved ones as they join him when they are called home. I am sure he was greeted by those who have so eagerly awaited his homecoming and is now winged and soaring with the other angels. May his loved ones be blessed by his spirit being around them at all time, in their hearts and in their memories. I lifted prayers for you and yours asking God to bless you abundantly this week, to look at your needs and provide for you a plan to overcome your battles and struggles and to be able to lay down at night and rest in the knowledge that everything will be okay. Bless those overcoming strokes this week, two people that I have known for many years are fighting this war and are winning because of the power of prayer. I thank you Father for revealing to us the miracle of your healing hands. I ask that you continue to be our shield of protection against the adversary and we are so thankful that we can call upon You when he begins to try and take over and you push him back. I pray for those in the darkness, open your eyes and see those around you who carry the light of Christ, move toward them and allow their lights to shine on you, learn how you to can carry the light that you so desperately desire. I ask these blessings, these mercies and the favors in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. 

  This story tonight is one like I have heard so many times, it is the answering of a plea! 

I should have been happier.

It was three days before Christmas and I was driving alone on a country road in our small mountain community delivering home-baked cookies to shut-ins.

I had spent the last couple of days with church friends, mixing dough, shaping date balls, melting chocolate, baking dozens and dozens of several varieties of Christmas cookies. We had covered every surface in my kitchen with cookies, laughing uproariously at our own jokes, singing off-key.

I was having a conversation with my Lord about the death of my mother four months earlier. We had had this conversation before and each time the Lord had provided a measure of peace.

And yet, they surfaced again and again; the same questions. Over and over and over: "Why did my saintly mother have to endure so many years of mind-numbing pain before her death? Why don't I have peace about where she is at this moment? Why, Lord, why?"

I delivered all the cookies that were assigned to me, warmly greeting the shut-ins who had no inclination of the battle being waged within me. At my final stop, a lady, accepting a box of cookies, kissed me on the cheek and whispered "You're an angel, do you know that?"

I was hardly an angel and I knew it.

Back in the car, I drove a short distance, then pulled over next to an old, weathered split-rail fence and parked. No farmhouses were in view. I laid my head down on the steering wheel and wept. I missed my mother. This was my first Christmas season without her. I had no peace in my heart about where she was. I knew well the verse, "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord." Still, I wept alone on that country road, unable to accept the peace that God was so willing to give me.

Finally, in desperation, and with no thought of Biblical precedent, I asked the Lord for a sign. A sign that He cared; a sign that He heard me; a sign that He loved me.

Wiping my eyes, I returned to our country home where I quietly prepared dinner for my husband. We were alone; our sons were married and living in another part of the state.

The next morning, while dressing for church, my husband turned quickly to me in surprise and asked, "Where on earth did you find it?"

"Find what?" I asked, straightening my skirt before the mirror.

"The ruby!" he replied. "Is that your ruby there on the bedspread?"

I rushed to the bed, picked up the ruby, held it close to my breast and began to weep.

A year earlier, my husband and I had celebrated an important wedding anniversary. My siblings, pooling their resources, had presented me with a lovely ruby on a simple gold chain. The next week, the stone had inexplicably come loose from its setting and was never found, leaving me distraught beyond reason.

I had searched for nearly a year, combing the carpets, checking our closets, looking in the most unlikely places for this ruby which had lovingly tied me to my siblings with umbilical strength.

And now, on this Sunday morning, the ruby appeared from nowhere in the center of our bedspread. More curiously, the bed had been made less than a half-hour before.

My husband, sensing my suspicion, placed his hands firmly on my shoulders and assured me that, as a Christian, he could affirm that he knew nothing about the ruby's whereabouts or how it ended up on our bedspread. Looking deeply into his eyes, I believed him.

I turned the precious stone over and over in the palm of my hand. How like God! He knew my flawed faith. He surprised me with joy.

There could be no other explanation.

And I sought none. 

--- Copyright © 2006 Mariane Holbrook