July 2022 – Michele Huey

Your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him. — Matthew 6:8 NIV

My husband came home one Friday evening with a disgusted look on his face.

“My truck is not to be moved,” he announced.

I looked out the door and noted the hood of his green pickup ajar. I was almost afraid to ask why.

A section of the fuel line was leaking, and until he replaced it, the truck couldn’t be used. So he went to the auto parts store in town. Just as our luck would have it, the part had to be ordered from the manufacturer, and we’d have to contact a local dealer in another town forty-five minutes away to order it for us.

“The part will be in on Wednesday,” he announced Saturday morning after a couple of phone calls. “Can you pick it up for me?”

Wednesday I called to make sure the part was in. It wasn’t. Neither was it in on Thursday. Or Friday. Monday I called the dealer for the fourth time.

“We ordered it, Ma’am,” he said. “We just didn’t get it yet. We don’t know where it is. The manufacturer said they shipped it. I’m going to put in another order and have them ship it so I have it tomorrow.”

“Why don’t we just forget it?” I said when I called the next day and it still wasn’t in. “I could have been to Detroit and back and gotten it myself.”

“Would you wait one more day?” he asked. He sounded as frustrated as I felt. “I’m going to call the manufacturer and find out where it is.”

“Okay,” I agreed, but not without a sigh.

The next day, even though the part we needed was put on the delivery truck at four o’clock that morning, it still wasn’t in. So what do we do now? It had been ten days since we ordered the part, and it was lost somewhere between Detroit and western Pennsylvania. If we ordered it from another dealer, we’d probably have to wait another week before it came in there. And what if the part came in the first place the day after we ordered it from someone else?

Finally, on Thursday, seven days after it was to be in, the elusive order arrived. One look at my husband’s face when he saw it, though, and I knew: After all that, it was the wrong part.

I got to thinking, though: We’re such an “instant-minded” society. Aren’t we like that with God, too?

We put in our orders with our heavenly Father, thinking that prayer is like putting our money in a vending machine, pushing a button, and having our answer drop down out of heaven like a candy bar. But more often than not, we have to wait, and waiting is the hardest part. Sometimes we wait so long, we think God is ignoring us or punishing us.

But when the answer does come, it’s always exactly what we need and right on time. And what’s even better—He never sends the wrong part.

Father, I am so impatient. Help me to be persistent and patient in prayer. Amen.

Read and meditate on Matthew 7:7–11.

Cairn at Acadia National Park
September 23, 2013

My God is my rock. – Psalm 18:2 (NIV)

When my husband and I visited the Acadia National Park Visitors Center, informational placards lined the uphill walkway from the parking lot to the building. Of course, I had to read them all. Not only because I needed to catch my breath from climbing the hundred-plus steps, either. Maybe it’s the teacher in me. Or my insatiable curiosity. Or both.

Since Dean’s impatience at my frequent stops was starting to show (and it was only the beginning of the day), I took pictures of the placards so I could read them later in the evening when he was asleep in his recliner.

But the cairns intrigued me, and I took my sweet time at each of them.

A cairn is a stone structure built to point the way on a trail. Although cairns come in various shapes and sizes, the ones at Acadia were no more than 18 inches high and were built with four or six large stones: two or four large, square ones on the bottom with one large, rectangular stone spanning them, and a smaller, triangular-shaped one on top, with the tip pointing the direction of the trail.

“Cairns are carefully built and placed to point the way,” one placard read. “When trail blazes are hidden by fog or snow, cairns are essential,” said another.

Another placard warned of tampering with the cairns: “Do not build new cairns or add to existing cairns – you may confuse or endanger hikers.”

Back at the camper, I googled “cairns” to find out more about them. Trail marks in North America, I learned, are often called “ducks” or “duckies” because the point of the top rock resembles a duck’s beak. “The expression ‘two rocks don’t make a duck’ reminds hikers that just one rock resting on another could be the result of accident or nature rather than intentional trail marking.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairn)

Like a path in the woods, the trail of life can be confusing at times, too. The fog of indecision, the snow of fear about the results of our choices may hide the direction we are to go. Sometimes all the paths look good – or bad.

Right now I’m wrestling with a decision of whether or not to proceed with the project of publishing a third book of meditations – compilations of this column. Since I self-publish, the cost upfront comes out of my pocket. I’ve started two or three times to put the book together since my last compilation came out in 2002. But each time I backed out because of finances.

“If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and He will give it to you,” the Bible tells us in James 1:5 (NLT).

And again: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. Seek His will in all you do, and He will show you which path to take” (Proverbs 3:5, 6 NLT).

God’s cairns are there for the asking. But sometimes we don’t recognize them because, like me, we don’t know what they are.

But when we do, we see that He’s placed them at every point we need direction. We just need eyes to see the duck.

Give me the spiritual sight to see and recognize the cairns You’ve placed along my life’s path, O Lord. Amen.

Read and reflect on Exodus 13:21–22

Michele Huey

Month: July 2022

The Wrong Part

Two Rocks Don’t Make a Duck

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