Miracles

I forget to pray. And often, in a variation of the same phenomenon, I pray for things for a while, and then stop praying for them because it doesn't seem like God is actually doing anything. In the past month, I've gotten three different reminders that God is at work even long after I've stopped asking.

I heard from a friend that he had finally apologized to someone and begun the process of healing that long-since broken relationship. I know both men and knew that my friend was, at least partly, in the wrong. So it cheered me to see the Spirit's work in his heart to repent and attempt reconciliation. It had been years since they had spoken. Where, except in the Body of Christ, does this happen?

I also heard through the grapevine about an old friend. I had helped bring her to Christ years ago, but she had shortly afterward wandered away from church and from Karen and I. I was deeply grieved over her, almost physically pained that someone genuinely converted could slip so easily back into a former life. At the time, I found myself doing some re-thinking about my theology of conversion, and wondering if indeed she was the type of "believer" described in Hebrews 6, whose conversion only seems genuine, but isn't. As I saw the slippage happening, I prayed that it would end, but I stopped after it seemed permanent. But wonder of wonders, I have since heard she is not only back in church, but has re-committed herself to Christ and is married to a man who is also a Christ follower. Color my cynical, faithless heart shocked, but joyful!

And last of all, I've found myself restoring relationships with a few people that I had hurt and who had hurt me. Years have passed since the original incidents, allowing the pain to ease, but never really heal. I had forgiven, but not reconciled. And honestly, I held out little hope that real healing would ever happen. I had stopped praying for it, just as I had stopped praying for these other things. Yet God was gracious to me, as He ever is, and kept working to bring about what could not happen without Him.

Oh the depths of both the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments and His ways past finding out!