A day at the beach

A neighbor of mine has cancer, and she has several times expressed a desire for an overnight trip to the beach. I have no beach house and no money even for an autumn rental. But I prayed that God would grant her heart’s desire—and salvation with it. I have found nothing more liberating than to pray for things that seem impossible. Any mother’s fool can pray for possible things.

This is my new practice in prayer, and I am pursuing it with a neophyte’s zeal. Petitions for the improbable stretch faith like nothing else. And Jesus wants faith stretched. This is what He was doing with the Syrophoenician woman (Mark 7:24-30), and what astonished Him about the centurion (Luke 7:1-9). Where is the thrill in receiving things that are likely to happen? What a poor thing it is if our church goals can seemingly be accomplished without God. Glory happens at the place where our ingenuity ends and God’s begins. God wants to do “far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). Why not give Him opportunity by asking?

A thumbnail sketch of history: Man loses authority over the Garden. Jesus comes to get it back: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore …” (Matthew 28:18-19). Note: His authority enables our “going.” Now man can exercise authority over creation again: “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20). That is, the disciples’ feet.

Not believing that God can grant unlikely requests seems to be the worst thing we can do:

“They spoke against God, saying, ‘Can God spread a table in the wilderness? He struck the rock so that water gushed out. … Can he also give bread? …’ Therefore, when the LORD heard, he was full of wrath … because they did not believe in God and did not trust in his saving power” (Psalm 78:19-22).

I heard through the grapevine that my son had pitched in with his friends for a house at Sea Isle City. I phoned him and mentioned my neighbor. He said no one would be staying at the place from Sunday night to Wednesday, so we could have it. My neighbor and I packed up and made the two-hour drive with bedsheets, towels, and a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, just in case.

“In case” happened. It rained all day Monday, breaking a long dry spell that has had my father interceding for his tomatoes. The day at the beach was no day at the beach, as it were. Why would God grant the beach house and not the weather? We didn’t even go there. It didn’t matter. We took the attitude that rain just adds a different dimension to any activity. On Day 2 the rain ceased, so we retired the puzzle and walked the sand dunes, laughing at plovers and their ridiculous fast-moving stick legs.

On the drive home, God gave us a sunset that didn’t quit. It started slow and small and unpromising in the west—a slight bruising of red, like a single stark note suspended above the horizon. Then, as if a symphony were unfurling, it was taken over by layered protrusions of pink as if smeared by fingers across the sky. Finally, not content to confine itself to one corner, it covered us like a canopy of ever-changing movements of music, music sung by angels. My neighbor said to me, “How can anyone believe there is no God?”

I then said to her, having shared with her about Christ during our rain day quarantine: “You know this means you can’t be saying ‘Jesus Christ’ and ‘God Almighty’ every other sentence like an exclamation point or curse word anymore.” She looked puzzled. “The Second Commandment,” I reminded her, a former Catholic myself relating to a Catholic according to the numbering system of the Ten Commandments she would recall from catechism class.

The grapevine hearing of a house available, the fortuitous vacancy of a few days, the baffling rain and flooding on the island, the plovers and the sunset and all things:

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).”