God Cares About Your Little Issues...{Another ACTS Student Convention Story}

Okay, I realize that I must seem a little ACTS Student Convention obsessed,
but getting to go visit last week was like stepping into the past.
Memories of my Glory Days having popping up right, left and center! :)
And since this is my blog about me and my Roller-Coaster Life,
I feel that can and should share them here. :)

When I was about fourteen,

I had a best friend I called "Kitty"

(that was not her name, but that's what I called her...

and she called me "Boo"...

you know, like off of Monsters, Inc...

*sigh* I love that movie...

ANYWAY...).

One year at ACTS she and I learned an important lesson.

We knew it was an important lesson at the time,

but I don't think we truly grasped the whole picture.

Looking back upon the story now,

I think I've grasped the significance.

We serve a GREAT, BIG GOD

Who likes to get down on our level

and take care of our little, insignificant issues.

One of things Kitty and I had in common was 

that we both had TERRIBLE eyesight!

As in, we are pretty much blind as bats without our contacts/glasses.

Well, Kitty was (listen to me talking about her like she's dead...

she's ALIVE AND WELL!) an exceptionally brave soul

in that she had the hard contacts and could actually wear them 

without them totally changing her personality

(yes, I'm admitting that when I tried hard contact lenses,

I turned into a zombie because I was so miserable).

Well one day, she was having some sort of issue with her contact

and took it out of her eye while walking 

across a large parking lot to our dorm room

(yeah, I know, probably not the smartest thing to do,

but, hey, the girl's eye was beyond agitated!

Give her a break!).

She had just gotten the contact out of her eye

and was beginning to rub the offending member with her other hand

when all of a sudden (and this is a direct quote from her...

at least I think it is...my memory isn't what it used to be...)

"a great and mighty wind sprang up 

and blew the little contact right out of [her] hand"!

For those of you who don't know,

hard contacts are a LOT more expensive to replace than soft ones.

So in addition to her now being partially blind,

this was a big problem due to cost of replacement.

I want you to think about this with me:

a soft contact lens is about the size of the tip of your finger.

It's made that way...easy to balance on your fingertip

and then insert in your eye.

A hard contact lens is even smaller

and can shatter if stepped on, dropped from tall heights, etc.

So basically this was a little, BIG problem

(what is it with me and oxymoron statements lately?).

We searched for the missing contact for a few minutes

and, naturally, couldn't find it.

We walked up to our dorm room to see 

if maybe it had gotten to Kitty's clothing somewhere.

It wasn't there.

We then concluded that it HAD to be outside in the parking lot somewhere.

Of course, we were getting a little frantic at this point

wondering if we would ever see that contact again.

So we took a second to pray.

It went something like this,

"Lord, please help us find Kitty's contact.

We don't want her to blind the rest of the week

and we really don't want her getting in trouble with her parents

because they have to order another expensive contact.

Please, please, help us. Amen."

We went back out to look.

And, MIRACULOUSLY, we found it!

There it was resting unbroken on the parking lot concrete

where several pairs of feet had just trod.

We were STUNNED!

Not only had we found an itty bitty contact in the middle of a parking lot,

but it wasn't even scratched!

Kitty was able to rinse it off with her contact solution

and put it back in her eye with absolutely no difficulty!

Then Kitty's mind started clicking and she made a statement,

"Wow! God really does care about the small things!"

She was right.

Was finding that contact a matter of life and death?

No.

If she would've had to phone her parents and tell them about losing a contact

they probably wouldn't have been happy,

but they wouldn't have disowned her or anything.

I'm saying all this to make this point:

if we hadn't located that contact,

it wouldn't have been the end of the world.

It was just a little thing that mattered to us

(well, more to her than me...

although I really didn't want my best friend having to walk around half blind).

Yet God saw fit to intervene in our little crisis.

Maybe He intentionally orchestrated the whole thing

so that we would learn the lesson 

that He does care about the little issues in our lives.

Right off the top of my head,

I can think of two other occasions where something like this has happened.

Where I asked for (or even just thought about) something small

that I really could've lived without if I had needed to,

but God came through

and blessed me with the very thing I was desiring.

To me, that sounds like a Father Who absolutely adores His child

and wants to surprise them with gifts from time to time.

Don't be afraid to ask God for what you want

in addition to what you need.

God the best Daddy there is

(just ask me, I KNOW!).

You are the apple of His eye

and that isn't going to change no matter what you do.

His favor is not based on your good behavior.

He loves you.

"Don't bargain with God. Be Direct. Ask for what you need.

This isn't a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we're in.

If your child asks for bread, do you trick him with sawdust?

If he asks for fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate?

As bad as you are, you wouldn't think of such a thing.

You're at least decent to your own children.

So don't you think the God who conceived you in love will be even better?"

Matthew 7:7-11 The Message

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