The ink of many pens

I began working my way through the miry bog of papers on my desk this afternoon, looking for something in particular, but inevitably finding something else.

Ironically, I found the "something else" in a folder printed with the inscription "I dreamed my whole desk was clean," given to me years ago by a friend as a joke.   How little did she realize that ten years later, it would be filled with notes on the back of envelopes, clipped articles, and deep ponderings written on the margins of unrelated things -- thoughts which still profoundly touch me, even as I read them now.

One piece of paper in that mess was left over from a Bible study I attended at least a half dozen years ago, maybe more, entitled "A Record of Prayer Requests and God's Answers."  There were dates, names of people I vaguely remember, and requests scribbled in the ink of many pens.

Why would I have saved this? I wondered out loud.

I glanced down the list of things we had prayed about --the usual things like praise for a repaired furnace, prayer for a husband's job, surgery for someone's mom.

And then I saw the deeper stuff we prayed for:  praying for a daughter to have the courage to walk away from a troubled relationship, a friend losing her baby, and a son's parole hearing after almost a decade in prison.  I can't remember a whole lot about what we studied that semester, but I remember the intensity of praying deep vulnerable stuff for each other.  And sometimes being led to a remarkable answer even while we were praying.

A bitterly cold morning, one of the women in the group slid into the room uncharacteristically late.  At the end of prayer requests, she said, "I didn't want to come today.  And I don't even want to ask this request because of its ridiculous nature."  She hesitated a moment.  "I have a refugee friend who will lose his job if he doesn't pass the employment test next month.  He needs a tutor, not just a tutor, but a tutor who is fluent in Turkish, and because the man is Muslim, the tutor must be male and be able to meet during the day."

I raised my hand.  "Another request?" the leader asked me.

"No," I almost gasped.  "The answer." 

The husband of a friend of mine had worked in Turkey for some 20 years. He now lived about two miles away and worked a flexible schedule.

This sheet I found was not just a random list of needs, but a chronicle of lives intertwined by prayer.  We rarely saw answers as immediate as that.  But we saw answers even more unexpectedly, spelled out in ways we did not recognize as the hand of God.  The answers came in a lot of different size packages....and as far as I know, are still in process.  Because God never works in singular dimensions, nor so neatly tied up with a bow.

Sometimes His purposes are revealed,
sometimes they are too deep to comprehend,
the depths of the ocean,
the enormity of the universe,
         His intricate design undergirding it all.

I thought about that prayer sheet this afternoon in a now distant season of my life in a different state, and about the group I am in now, praying for each other with a box of kleenex in the center of the table.

Some things we see,
but even more that we do not.
But oh,
  the difference praying makes,
that which is revealed
       even in the rear-view mirror,
the faithfulness of God.

Then you shall call,
and the LORD will answer;
you shall cry for help,
and He will say,
                "Here I am."
The LORD will guide you
                 continually.

                Isaiah 58. 9, 11