Merciful, Faithful Lord of Miracles

God is so, so Good.

Yesterday afternoon He worked another miracle. Mom and dad are in town; after parting with us outside of Sacramento two weeks ago, they headed up to Canada and are now driving down on their way to southern CA, visiting family and friends along the way. So yesterday I took them and the kids downtown Santa Cruz to walk around and windowshop. The weather was gorgeous. I found an adorable, reasonably priced top, which my wardrobe desperately needed. We tried on hats. We splurged on fruit smoothies. We stopped into a favorite shoe/sock store and discovered that an adorable pair of little toddler keens (our favorite kid shoe) that D and I had previously seen and wanted for E (but for which we had not been quite willing to fork out the dough) were now on sale--and then my parents said they wanted to get them for E as an early birthday present! The day could not have been going better. . . until I stopped at Noah's Bagelry to pick up bagels, and discovered my wallet was missing.

I had used it at Jamba Juice, and thought I had felt it in my purse in the Sock Shop, before mom and dad offered to pay for E's shoes. But it was no longer in my purse, nor in my pockets, and my hasty retracing of steps between the two stores offered nothing. My first thoughts were pretty desparing: in my mind, downtown Santa Cruz must be one of the worst places to lose something of value, there being so many people hanging around there, always looking for a handout. A misplaced wallet could be a windfall for someone. As I told the girls in the car as we left downtown, the person who found my wallet would be one of two kinds: either honest, or dishonest. But of course there is always hope, and I found myself oddly swaying in emotion between confidence that I would get it back and despair that this could end up really, really bad (identity theft, financial ruin--you know how the mind goes).

Of course I was praying from the moment I realized it was gone. My prayers were not purposeful, coherent, more like feelings and fleeting thoughts. But I was conscious of one specific prayer: I asked God to convict the heart of the person who found it so that he/she would return it. I also felt strongly like God was telling me that He would show me something about Himself through whatever came of this painful situation. So while I had to call D and report the missing wallet, in case we needed to start the process of cancelling credit cards, etc., I was still actually pretty hopeful that it would all be ok, since God is God. (I was not planning on writing this next part, but am suddenly feeling compelled to write Truth) He is merciful, He is compassionate, He is faithful, He is extravagant with His blessings, He has promised to never forsake me. He is entirely capable of taking care of me, of our family. Whatever money we have is a blessing directly from Him; even D's ability to provide for our family is the result of God's loving provision. Even if things sometimes go badly, even horribly, God is no less loving or Good, and if I trust Him and continue to follow where He is leading, all will be well. "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose"--Romans 8:28. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?. . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us"--Romans 8:35, 37. Amen!

Okay, I'm coming down from the exultation and back to the story. But you know how it ends already, since I said it was a miracle. The story is in how God did it.

We left downtown shortly afterwards, did a couple of in and out stops on the way home, crept in slow traffic on the highway, and arrived back home to find. . .

a note, stuck in the door. It read: "Please call _____ ask 4 Tom. I have your wallet."

So, not only did God make everything right again and return the wallet to me, He did it even before we got home. He was answering the groanings of my heart even as I uttered them. That is how faithful He is--that He knows what we need even before we ask, and delights in blessing us.

When I called this man named Tom, he said he found my wallet right outside the juice shop. So he must have left downtown immediately with the intentions of returning it, and even though he lives in Santa Cruz, he drove all the way to our town, to our house, to give it back. When I thanked him for being the honest kind of person, he told me "that was how he was trying to live these days." When my dad drove over to pick up the wallet and met him, Tom told my dad that he had not always made the right choices in life, but he was trying to do the right things now. So right from the horse's mouth--God convicted this man to return the wallet, just as I had prayed. Now I am praying that God blesses this man as much as He has blessed me.

And then, as if God thought I needed a little extra assurrance that this whole experience was the manifestation of a personal, loving God in action, He gave me one more validation. After getting home, finding the note, estatically calling first Tom and then D, sending my dad off to get the wallet (thank you, dad!) and getting the kids all settled down for quiet time (which they did not necessarily need, but which I desperately did), I sat down to nurse E while surfing favorite sites on the web, so I could start relaxing and slowly unraveling the knots that had built up all inside of me. I was current on all my favorite blogs, so I decided to read from the archives of my friend Rosa's blog, since she started blogging just before we became good friends and I have not read all the early entries. And a random minute later, I came across her own blogged experience of something lost and unexpectedly found, and how she felt God spoke to her directly through the experience.

http://rosa-sinensis.blogspot.com/2007/12/lessons.html (If you want to read it--her insights are good)

It was as if He was saying to me, See? It's not just your imagination. I am who I am, unchanging and faithful. This wasn't the first time and it won't be the last.