Have you ever won a booby prize? You remember, it's the gift you get for pinning the tail onto a friend's forehead rather than on the intended paper donkey's behind. Things went really badly for you, but you were given a prize of some sort anyway to console you for the failed outcome of your performance. While praying recently for a dear friend's mom who is being tested for Alzheimer's disease, God revealed a way I see Him and His consolation that He wants to change in me.
"Lord," I plead, "Please help _______ to not have Alzheimer's. Let the doctors be wrong and the tests come back negative. And be with her husband and her children as they help her through this time. God, if you don't keep her from having Alzheimer's, then please be with her and her family throughout this ordeal and show them more of You." What I really, really wanted, my Plan A, was healing for my friend's mom. But if God refused to provide my very best plan, I asked Him to go ahead with Plan B, which was for Him to be with this family.
After closing my prayer in the name of Jesus, this thought arose in me: God is not the booby prize, yet I pray as though He is such! The Lord's precious Presence is far greater than any outcome for which I'm begging. I do know I can bring my specific requests to God, even as Jesus pled with God in the garden. "Pour out your heart before Him," writes David in Psalm 62:8. How wonderful and necessary it is to be able to honestly come before God laying out my petitions and grievances.
But I believe God is showing me that, even more than these answers that I am seeking, His with-us-ness is what it's all about. He wants me to know -- to deep-down know -- that His goodness is infinitely more good than any perceived badness is bad. Is disease awful? Yes! I am still praying for this dear lady to not have to go through the suffering that accompanies this illness, but whatever God allows to be sifted through His loving hands will, as we trust and look for Him, leave us awe-full of Him. So even the awful can eventually leave us awe-filled.
"When you pass through the waters, I WILL BE WITH YOU," promised God to the Israelites (Isaiah 43:2). As I spent time with God absorbing the truth about Him in this passage, He gave me a mental picture of myself as a mom clinging to my children in the water when they were unable to swim. Because of how precious they were to me, I held on tightly. Nothing was going to cause me to release my loving, protective grip on them. In His goodness, in His love, He embraces me in the rough waters of life tenderly, with care and with His strength as my father. During those times of being held by God, I come to know Him more intimately and to trust Him in new ways.
Whether the Lord God plucks me or my loved ones out of the stormy times or carries us through them, He is better than the answer to any prayer for deliverance I seek. "I am the first; and I am the last," says the Holy One. He is the only prize! Oh, to know the sweetness of this truth more and more fully as I live this life He has given me!
Father God, if I or others are to be healed, let us know You in the healing and wholeness you provide. And if we are to go through hardship that we dread, may we find You there and know your grace to be more than sufficient to meet every need. Let me more and more see that You are both the destination and the journey. "I am the first; and I am the last," You say. You are the only prize! And You are what I desire.
