GROWING SEEDS:: My Prayer Door

"The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective."  

James 5:16

"When a believing person prays, GREAT things happen",  my good friend Max Lucado reminds us. 

A few years ago, we needed a new front door.  Our existing door was warped from standing in water for a day or two and was currently being held shut by a single concrete block.  Our contractor insisted it couldn't be repaired and must be replaced.  The problem was, there wasn't enough money in the budget for a new front door.  

Day and night, I thought about that door.  I researched...I double checked the bank account...I scoured the internet for deals, even found the perfect door, but it wasn't financially feasible to purchase it.  One day my wise husband finally suggested, "Why don't we pray about it?" to which I remember responding, "Has it come to that?"

For some reason, we have it in our heads that God considers our less-than-tragic issues unworthy of His time. We act like we have a certain quantity of prayer requests we can ask for and we don't want to "waste" any of our prayers on something less than huge.  Praying for a new front door seemed like a crazy thing to pray about and a true waste of God's time when I had bigger fish to fry with Him.  But we did as my husband suggested.  We prayed our Father would bring us a new front door, if this was His will.

After a few weeks, our new wood floors were installed and we headed to Dallas to return the left-over flooring back to the store.  I counted as we loaded the boxes into our van...a total of 15....and knew I would also be required to pay a 20% restocking fee. I mentally calculated the anticipated refund in hopes we could come close to affording that new door.  As they unloaded the boxes out of our van at the store, they unloaded 18 boxes.  I had them recount.  I knew we loaded 15 boxes...I had counted it three times in the driveway before leaving....but somewhere between Mt. Vernon and Dallas, we gained 3 extra boxes of wood flooring.  When I went to finalize the credit, there was a note on the register from the manager saying, "I'm waiving the 20% restocking fee for Ms. Etheridge".  As they rang up the total credit, it shockingly came up to the EXACT amount of the door we had wanted.  Not a penny off.

Tears of joy were pushing their way down my cheek as I walked out the door of the flooring store, credit receipt in hand and feeling the intense power of prayer I had just witnessed.  "When a believing person prays, GREAT things do, indeed, happen."  Amen.