Praise du jour

Apart from insect infestations (the conclusion of the story to be revealed shortly--keep checking back), and an occasional computer crash (thanks go out to Ben M., for his kind work on my computer), my life is fairly uneventful, and my praises to God are for personal day-to-day things that may not make sense to other people in a blog. But once in a while I have to share certain experiences that were truly God's workings.

The last week Joelle and I have been frantically stuffing endless boxes and envelopes for GYC promo materials, which needed to go out this week. I think we've spent an average of 4 hours a day since Sunday on this, and along the way, have encountered numerous technical problems--computers, printers, ink, moving boxes between our houses numerous times, etc. (I've been reading a book about early Adventist history, where a quite a few of the Advent camp meetings in 1843-1844 drew 6,000+ people daily to hear William Miller preach about the soon return on Christ--and none of the organizers of these events even had cars, let alone Internet, mail merge programs, or Endicia pre-paid postage systems. But that's another blog.)

Yesterday evening Joelle, Norman and I loaded my Jetta to the brim with yet another shipment of envelopes to go out to all the SDA conferences on earth, I think, and my assignment for the day is to take them to the post office.

This morning at exactly 3 AM my car alarm went off. For a bit of background, there have been quite a few car break-ins in our neighborhood recently (the apartments in the area have carports with no garage doors). Also for clarification, although you hear endless car alarms all night and day from the kind of cars whose alarms go off at the slightest vibration or possibly affront to their feelings, my car alarm has never gone off before. I just knew that this meant someone was trying to break into my car. Granted, 500 brochures advertising "Be" are probably not the mother lode for car thieves, but I couldn't help thinking how disastrous it would be if someone decided to vandalize them for fun, or take them (or my car) away just to check if there was something more valuable in all of those boxes.

All of this was going through my head, in those odd intersomnious 3 AM moments, when everything is scarier than reality. I certainly didn't want to go out and try to chase anyone off all alone in the dark at that time, so there was nothing to do but pray. So I prayed and prayed, "Dear Jesus, this is your work and your ministry; please keep these brochures safe so they can get to the people who need them!" While I was praying, my favorite part of a hymn came to mind, "I Sing The Mighty Power of God:"

There's not a plant or flower below but makes Thy glories known;
And clouds arise, and tempests blow, by order from Thy throne.
Creatures that borrow life from Thee are subject to Thy care;
There's not a place where we can flee but God is present there.

I figured if God could do all of this, He could certainly protect some brochures.

Eventually I fell asleep, and first thing in the morning I went out to see what became of my car. There it was, completely intact, nothing missing and no damage to my car.

A postscript to the story: I was so excited that I called Joelle at 7:45 and told her the story so she could thank God with me, because I didn't think I could thank Him enough. Maybe that's what praise really is.