Print or Email

TheDiscipleMD

Her big brown eyes gazed up at me. Then my five-year old said, “Let’s say a prayer Daddy!”  And what was I going to say back to her?  That was the dilemma my little girl put me in that cold winter day so long ago.  I was faced with what I would call, a “Put Up or Shut Up!” moment.

It was the winter of 1994, one of the coldest that I can remember in my lifetime. I had taken my five kids out to play at a local field close to my home. I thought I had securely placed the keys to the house in my coat.  But, alas, after I had played with the kids in the windy cold snowy afternoon weather, I reached for the keys but they were gone. Somehow they had fallen out onto the frozen white ground.  The sun was now setting and the wind began to howl as the temperature started to drop to frigid levels. My wife was out shopping and so the door to the house was locked, and I had no way of contacting her. I told the kids, who ranged from my oldest of 14, to my little girl of 5, to spread out across the field to search for the keys.  For the next half hour or so we searched and we searched but to no avail. As we gathered back together, out of the darkness I heard her tiny voice, “Let’s say a prayer Daddy! Heavenly Father will help us.”

I had been teaching my children since their infancy that Heavenly Father listens and answers prayers. And so it was that the time had come for me to exercise what I had been preaching all those years. I must admit that my faith wavered a bit.  What if our prayer was not answered? How would I explain that? Yet, my own conviction, faith, and testimony of the power of prayer was on a firm foundation.  And although I knew that Heavenly Father doesn’t always immediately answer our pleas, I felt confident that with an exercise of our faith, He would recognize the innocent faith of a child and answer the petition of her father.

And so it was that we knelt in a circle as I offered a prayer that we would find those keys. It was a simple prayer, made short by the bitter coldness of the air.  As we arose I immediately and directly walked over to a spot about 10 yards away, reached down, brushed the snow off the ground and there they were.

We safely and joyously went home to the warmth of our home. I don’t know why some prayers are immediately answered while others remain unanswered for months or years.  With our limited understanding sometimes they never seem to be answered.  But for a young father of five, they were that day. And the warmth of my house didn’t come close to the fire I felt in my heart that night, as I knelt in prayer to thank a loving Father who creates worlds without end, yet takes time to send His spirit to touch the heart of a lowly soul like mine.