Lately, I've been noticing how much more our family prays now compared to life before missions. Or maybe it's not that we pray any more or less, it's that now we have even more faith that God will answer our prayers. I've always known that God answers prayers, but I don't know how much I actually took enough time to think about how much I believed it. We prayed the rosary and went to Mass and if something came up, we would pray for the intention in family prayers. We still do those things. But since missions, we've also been praying for things when they come up instead of waiting for later.
Before missions, too, if I told my mom I was upset or missing something, she would tell me to pray about it. I would, but I didn't really have a very strong trust that God would answer my prayer. Lately, God has been answering our prayers. And sometimes they're things that you wouldn't expect God to be particularly concerned about. I mean, of course He cares about all our needs but when you pray for something small, you don't realize how little it is compared to other problems until He answers it and you think "Wait. Why did He care so much as to let the TV work?" The answer is because He loves us.
When our brothers are about to watch a movie and the DVD player doesn't work, we pray over it.
When I have one of my knitting needles but the other one has been lost for a week, I pray about it and find it right when I need it.
One time, I lost some of my writings that I didn't really need and could have lived without. But they were special to me because I had worked a long time writing them and didn't want to lose all my work. I looked all over in the house and checked places more than once. I finally went back to my room and couldn't understand where they could have gone. I had been praying while trying to find them but when I sat down in my room, I decided to really pray and trust that God would let me find what I was looking for. Two seconds after I had ended the Memorare, I sat on the floor and just for the sake of it, glanced under my bed. I sat staring at my papers that had fallen behind my bed and started laughing. I had already looked under my bed at least two times before then and hadn't seen a trace of them. But there they were. I don't know if the papers weren't there before, and God actually put them there, or if they were there the whole time and God didn't want me to see them until He saw how much I trusted Him first. Either way, it was a good way for me to experience that God cared enough for a little thing like that just cause I'm His child and He loves me.
Another time, we (Meredith; myself; a fellow missionary, Teresa; and two of our friends) were at a retreat and (I know, I was a little distracted) I was craving ice cream during Mass. Teresa had brought us to the retreat. So I prayed, "Lord, please let Teresa want to get us ice cream when we're driving back home." After I prayed it, I thought, "Well, what if God doesn't let us get ice cream?" But I put that thought away and said, "No. I KNOW God is going to let us have it."
By the end of the retreat, I had forgotten all about my earlier prayer. We were talking in the car on the way back to Big Woods, when Teresa suddenly says, "Hey, girls, do ya'll want ice cream?" And I started laughing and told her, "Oh my gosh, Teresa, I just prayed in Mass that you would get us some because I was really craving it!" And we all started laughing and she said, "Well, I'm glad God used me to answer your prayer!"
There's a saying that fits this subject:
Our God is a REAL God
Who does REAL things
For REAL people
In the REAL world.
In the Bible, it never says, "God answers your prayers, but only the ones that are really important. He doesn't waste His time doing things for absent minded people who forget where they put their car keys."
It says just the opposite:
"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened." (Mt.7:7-8)
And:
"Your Father knows what you need before you ask him." (Mt. 6:8)
And:
"Look at the birds of the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they?...If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?...seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides." (Mt. 6:26, 30, 33)
And:
"Is anyone among you sick? He should summon the presbyters of the church, and they should pray over him and annoint [him] with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith will save the sick person and the Lord will raise him up...The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful. Elijah was a human being like us; yet he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain upon the land. Then he prayed again, and the sky gave rain and the earth produced fruit." (James 5:14-15, 16-18)
And so many more verses (but I think I've made the point.(: )
I just want to challenge you, when you pray, to really trust and know that God WILL answer your prayer. Not like, "Please, Lord, Oh I HOPE that you will answer me!"
But like, "Please, Lord, I KNOW you will answer me because you love me and you said that whatever we ask, you will give it to us just because we do ask!"
I just finished reading the book Holy Daring about St. Therese. She had so much faith that God would answer her just because she was His child. I was challenged a lot by her faith and that's what made me start to try to pray with a great confidence that God would answer my prayers. I'm not perfect at it yet, though. I'm still working on it and I still have a long way to go before I catch up to the great faith of saints like St. Therese. But you have to start somewhere. :)
~Maddie
