What beckons underneath

In this season of grandchildren, I am never surprised by where something may be hidden...and by what means it may be found.

For the past week or so, my daughter had been looking for her nursing cover.  Last night, she asked me if I had seen it at our house, which I hadn't.  Nothing obvious to me.  "If it was here," I told her, "I would have seen it."

"I guess it's just lost," she lamented after a thorough search of her house and car.

And so this morning, I decided to look again.  I glanced in the ordinary, most likely places.  And then I went another dimension deeper.  I looked behind cushions.  I went into other rooms.

Knowing the perspective of small children, many things are hidden underneath.  And so, I got down on my knees and sought under the couch, the bed, and the living room chair.  You never know what you may find when you get on your knees, sometimes things you are not even looking for.

And while I was on my knees, it occurred to me that when I am seeking, I always need to get on my knees.  Even in what is considered small and trivial, I desperately need God's perspective on it.  And when I do, God always puts something on my radar that I have not considered before.  Sometimes that "blip" on my radar is the answer, and sometimes it just leads me to another trail.

"All our fret and worry is caused by calculating without God," said Oswald Chambers in the early 1900s.  "I pray, and believe that Thou dost create something in answer to and by the very means of my prayer, that was not in existence before."

My search did not put the lost item someplace.  But it led me to it.

To make a long story short, I found the nursing cover neatly folded like a doll blanket on the rocker in the playroom, not where I would have expected it.  And isn't that the way it is?

And in the process, God reminded me that getting on my knees in prayer before Him always leads me in even more profound ways to a divine perspective that is not my own, a dimension that reveals His deeper purposes.  There are surprises underneath.  You never know what is waiting to be discovered.

How much have I missed?  Not just the answers, but God Himself.

But when I thought how to understand this,
it seemed to me a wearisome task,
until I went into the sanctuary of God.

                                      Psalm 73. 16-17