Thursday, May 31, 2012

A possible reason for why my car broke down this morning...

"Gumnut! Gumnut!" My daughter cried in her car seat as she watched the garage door close. She was looking forward to a day with her little friends at the child care centre, but our car decided to go on a strike and we weren't going anywhere. Not only so, I was told roadside assistance would arrive within 90 minutes. 90.

I had tried everything I could think of to start the car. Looked through the manual, called the men, searched google, and finally, called for roadside assistance (yes, in that sequence, don't ask me why). There was nothing more I could do, and that's what I told my daughter. Needless to say, she kept crying. "Look, sweetheart, there's nothing I can do now. We can't go to Gumnut today. The car is not working... But, we could pray (what, where did I get this idea from)? We could ask God to help us (yeah right, as if He would care about such mundane things)? I don't think the car is going to start, I mean, God *can* if He wants to, but yeah, let's pray..." (italics my thoughts)

So I prayed with my daughter. I prayed that somehow, the car would start, and we would be able to get to Gumnut. Yet as I prayed, I pretty much didn't believe it would happen. Why would God answer a prayer like that?

"Alright, I'm going to try start the car one last time (I really think this is pointless). If it doesn't start, we'll have to go back into the house okay?"

Garage opening, key in ignition, key turned, headlights flicker on/off noisily, and the car remained as it was (see, as if it would miraculously start).

"Sorry sweets, car isn't working!" As I turned from my daughter and was just about to close the garage door again, I almost couldn't believe my eyes. The roadside assistance car was reversing on to our driveway!!! I looked back at my daughter, "Look! God answered our prayer! Someone is here to fix our car! Yay!"

I had not expected assistance to arrive so quickly. It was within 15 minutes of my call for sure. Of course, having roadside assistance arrive early didn't mean the car would be fixed, yet for me, I was just amazed that they arrived exactly at the time after we prayed. Now, I know you may think this is all in my head, that if I hadn't prayed, assistance would have arrived at precisely that moment anyway, and you are probably right. Yet I don't think this is about my 'prayer' working, but the fact that God allowed me, and more importantly my daughter, to experience Him. For me, I prayed with little faith (if not none!), and had an expected answer in mind (the car would start miraculously) that I didn't expect to happen. Yet the outcome was indeed out of my expectations--I didn't have to wait long for help to arrive.

I am no expert in prayer. I don't pray often enough and I haven't worked out this 'prayer' thing around my head either, but I can confidently say that God listens to and answers our prayers. Yes, even a little girl's one. I don't know whether my daughter knows what praying really means, but I hope that one day, she may remember this little incident where we prayed, and God answered.

And the end of the story? Well, it turned out that our car had a flat battery, easily fixed. We got to Gumnut safe and sound, and my daughter was able to spend a lovely day with her friends there! :-)

How has God answered your prayer today?

P.S. I'm in no way implying that prayer is useless in the sense that things will happen even if we don't pray. God can choose to work through prayer (which I think is pretty awesome), but prayer is a big topic and probably warrants another post ;-)

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