--WHAT PRAYER CAN DO ~~

--"Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap; they have no storeroom nor barn, and yet God feeds them;
how much more valuable you are than the bird!" --[Luke 12:24 NASB]

--Winged Messenger ~~

--TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS. That was my motto as a Marine; now it was the motto of my small trucking business. I'm a man of action. But there wasn't a thing I could do about my current situation.

A driver at my company's Casper, Wyoming, location had gotten into an accident that totaled one of our tractor trailers. Business in Casper had come to a halt. I sat at my desk at home in Washington, helplessly studying an Excel Spreadsheet. "The insurance won't pay out the full value of that truck," I said to my wife, Catherine. "Profits were already down. How are we going to keep going?"

"'Look at the birds of the air,'" Catherine said, quoting from the Bible. 'They neither reap nor sow...yet your heavenly Father feeds them.'"

I knew the verse well, I'd tried to imagine myself as a bird trusting God to protect me. As an ex-Marine, I didn't identify with sparrows or swallows. Maybe a hawk or an eagle, like on the Marine Corps emplem. A bird of prey, of action. But those didn't seem to be the kinds of birds Luke was talking about. 'Lord, please show me how to rest in your care. Right now it feels impossible. All things are possible with You, Lord.'

To take my mind off business, I took Catherine out to dinner. A storm was coming as we left the house. By the time we finished eating, the wind had become a gale. We drove home in a downpour. The storm flung branches across the road and pummeled our car with sheets of rain. Finally we pulled into our driveway. I parked behind the camper, which was tucked away beneath a carport.

"What's that?" Catherine asked.
I peered through the windshield. The headlights showed something perched on the camper hitch, just under the carport. "It's a Cooper's hawk!" I said.

"He must be scared in all this wind," said Catherine.

I looked closer. "He's not scared at all," I said. "He's fast asleep!"

The wind, the rain, the headlights--despite and the chaos, the Cooper's hawk was unruffled. If that bird of prey could trust God to protect him in a storm like this, maybe this old bird could too! I knew to trust in Him.~

--GUIDEPOSTS/MM~
--"Thy Will" // (lyrics/ Hillary Scott & The Scott Family) <https://youtu.be/nRBmoRa9cjo>
~~~~~~~~~