When it looks like nothing’s happening

Sitting there at my favorite place in the world to create (that small, round table tucked into the corner), the owner of the coffee shop had stopped by.  We talked about business, how theirs was doing, and then he said, “Maybe I should just put a ‘reserved’ sign on this table for you.  The last couple mornings, someone else has been sitting there.”

I laughed.  “And here I was just thinking, ‘I should be paying rent for this spot,’” because I really had.  He laughed, too, and I began to tell him what had been going on.  How the column finally had a name.  How I was prepping to query more newspapers.  How it had been an eventful summer.  How it was that I knew it was “go time” and what the next steps should be.

It really had been an eventful summer, certain details of which will be joyfully shared one day.  Suffice it to say, the cloud had begun to move, and even though the end of the journey was not yet clear, there had, indeed, been light and guidance, step by step by uncertain step.

Not all events had been happy ones. Walking in this very morning, I was thinking about the season of battle I’d entered, feeling the weight of it, the gravity, and knowing that the stakes were higher than ever before.

And I thought of a single prayer the Lord had answered, one He’d led me to begin voicing just months ago, not knowing…

“Thank You,” I breathed, opening the door, the scent of brewing coffee wafting out.  “Thank You.  ‘Cause so many times, I don’t get to see if my prayers are being answered or not.”

I can’t help but think of you this morning.  Are you, too, praying desperately for something big?  Are you, like me, waiting for God to show up and make stuff happen?  Do you, too, get weary in the praying, the fighting, the trusting, the struggle?

Know this – in spite of seeming stillness; in the face of (apparently) unanswered prayer; when it looks like nothing’s happening and the heavens are silent, that’s exactly when He’s busy.  Every prayer you offer, He catches.  Every petition you send, He hears.  Every plea you whisper, He saves.

He never lets one of them fall, but holds them all in His hands, saving them up in a bowl, and they rise like incense before the throne.  He smiles, you know, as He inhales that sweet, sweet aroma – the cry from a trusting heart who, though not seeing, still believes.  Still hopes.  Still waits.  And still prays.

Keep walking, my friend.  Keep walking.  There’s more than you know that’s happening in your neck of the woods.