Occasionally a hallelujah story will make my hair stand on end. This is one of those. It started when my son e-mailed me a forward with cute notes children had written to God. I don't often hit forward, but chose to send this one on to an elite group of writer friends. What follows shows how much God loves us: His amazing timing.
From the keyboard of Connie, my friend, who lost her son Jonathan to cancer:
An incredible thing happened this morning—so amazing that even now I’m having a hard time wrapping my mind around the way God uses the simplest things, and puts them in place long before we realize their significance. All I can do is stand in awe of Him.
I clicked on my email this morning. There were several so I started at the bottom and worked my way up. One was from my agent. It was another rejection. I had pitched NEW MERCY (my cancer book) to a publisher in September. They finally got back to my agent, telling her the book was well written, and blah, blah, blah, but they didn’t feel they could take on this project at this time. I was disappointed and disheartened to say the least.
I went on to the next email. It was from a friend who had forwarded a bunch of cute letters to God written by children. Instead of being typed into the body of the email, these were the actual scanned photos of the letters the children wrote, so we actually read them in the children’s own handwriting. As I scrolled down and read each one, they made me smile. Just what I needed after a stinging rejection. I scrolled down a little more to read the next one, and the next one.
Then my heart stood still and my breath caught in my throat as I started reading one of the letters. I knew that handwriting. As I read, the letter was very familiar. I’d read it before—25 years ago. I scrolled down a little more to reveal the child’s name. It was Jonathan’s. I started shaking. It was a copy of a letter he wrote when he was in second grade. He was in a Christian school and his teacher instructed the class to write a letter to God. I still have the original. It’s in a box upstairs in the attic.
It was a cute letter, telling God that if He hadn’t let the dinosaurs become extinct, we wouldn’t have a country. (He was 7.) His last sentence in the letter told God, “You did the right thing.” (Doing the right thing was something I was trying to stress to Jonathan during that time.) It was cute then. Today it was miraculous.
It was like hearing Jonathan’s voice from heaven telling me, “Do the right thing, Mom. Don’t give up.”
I have no idea how that letter got on the Internet. I have no idea why his second grade teacher made a copy of that letter and kept it. What boggles my mind is the way God used such a small thing, put in place so long ago, and brought this new friend into my life a few months ago and used her to send me this email this morning. I am awestruck by the lengths God will go just to bless me.
Psalm 66: 5 “Come and see the works of God; He is awesome in His doing toward the sons of men.”
Psalm 66: 16 “Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will declare what He has done for my soul.”
6 comments:
Consider how long ago and in how many detailed ways the Lord had to orchestrate this point, then that move, then this event, then that heart in order for this woman to read "Jonathon" on that specific day, that hour, that minute! How could a person ever doubt that God cares for the individual? How could we ever wonder if He's paying attention to our need? How can we ever fathom the depth of His extravagant love?
This makes me tear up each time I think of it. What an awesome God we have, to put all the dominoes in place then give a gentle push with His finger at the perfect time.
My heart clenched, then the tears flowed, then I thanked God for speaking to me through your testimony. I needed this affirmation right at this time. Thank you for speaking truth to my heart. Thank you ,Jesus, for knowing the details of my life and providing for every one of them, even when I don't know enough to pray or ask for help.
AWESTRUCK!!
Dear Eileen and Connie, thanks so much for sharing this awe-inspiring story. I was just reading an article about the story of Joseph in Genesis and how God was at work in His life and the lives of those he touched even tho Joseph had many "bad" things happen to him. God always worked things out for his good, even years later. I love all the details in this story about how Eileen forwarded to Connie a cute email of kids' writings about God, not knowing it contained something Connie's own son had written 25 years ago. Only God could orchestrate something like that!
Oh my. Tears definitely are in my eyes after reading this. God is so amazing! And He is so good. How He cares for every little detail in our lives. Thank you, Connie and Eileen. I'm so blessed to call you friends!
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