One day, I prayed to God about a stupid mistake I had made.
My nine-year-old daughter and I had been out for a Saturday of shopping errands. As we hurried from our home to the car, Sabrina handed me her coin purse. Without really thinking, I dropped it into my lap for the short drive to the store.When we walked to the first store, I was holding her purse in my hand. But when we got ready to leave, I no longer had it.
As we headed for the check-out my daughter asked, “Mom, can I have my money?”
“I don’t have it,” I replied.
“Yes, you do,” she insisted. “Remember? I gave it to you.”
At that moment, I had absolutely no recollection of taking the coin purse from her. None. Then she added to my stress. She explained, “I had all my vacation money in it: thirty dollars!” My heart sank. My hands were sweaty as the details of my day ran quickly through my mind. It was one of those bad mommy moments. Could my memory be failing me?
We rushed out of Walmart and headed to our car. We searched the front seat and the back, but there was nothing but a crumpled Kleenex and a few pennies. “Please God,” I murmured, “Help me find Sabrina’s purse. Help me at least to remember where I might have lost it.” I grabbed her hand and headed back to retrace our steps. We went into the shoe store and walked the aisles. By the women’s shoes – I saw it.
In that crowded store, filled with visitors and left for almost two hours, lying by itself on a bench, was my daughter’s little black leather coin purse. It was bulging. I opened the zipper and saw that it still contained thirty, crumpled up dollar bills. Incredibly, nothing was missing.
“Oh Sabrina,” I said. “I can’t believe it!” I hugged her and waved the purse in the air. “Let’s thank God right now!”
So there, in the middle of Payless, we held an impromptu prayer meeting. I thanked God for helping us, even though it was my own stupidity. I thanked him for protecting Sabrina’s little coin purse filled with $30 of her hard-earned money. Our smiles lit up that shoe store.
I thankful that day for this simple answer to prayer. But one thing troubled me. Does God care about coin purses? Does he want to know when we panic, when we stumble, when we are stupid and simply forget?
I think He does.
The Jesus I pray to is the same Jesus who spoke of lost sheep and lost coins. He is the God of Peter who feared walking on water, the God of the disciples who whined when they were hungry and the fish weren’t biting. He walked among humanity. He sees it all. Yet with all of the larger concerns in the world, the earthquake in Haiti, the economic crisis, the sinfulness of mankind, I can sometimes feel a bit presumptuous assuming that God will take a moment and listen to my whispered prayers. How can I bother the God of the universe? Should I?
But from the time I was a little girl, I was taught that His eye was on the sparrow, and thus, on me as well. I was taught that God wants to hear me, and that He doesn’t mind when I turn to Him with even my smallest needs. In many ways, what I call my “stupid” prayers are my way of being sure God is listening, that I am practicing his presence in each moment of my life.
C.S. Lewis once said that he prayed not to change God, but to change himself. In the same way, I pray not just for answers, but to be heard. I pray to keep myself mindful that God is there, that He knows me, that He is listening, and that He is intimately involved in my life.
Prayer, even about the stupid, ordinary, mundane things of my life, has a way of changing me.
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