Part of my morning routine, usually before the sun comes up, is bringing Sacred Favorites Radio up on the second computer in my office at home, just loud enough to be background music. Then I scan email for urgent messages received overnight. I stop and read David Wilkerson's email devotional, which is always powerful and touching.
Overnight, while we sleep, at 1:00 A.M. our system assigns each person on our staff a different stander of the day, one person we will pray for especially that day. My morning routine always includes reading that person's name and praying for them right then.
This morning there was an urgent overnight message. A female stander in Virginia that we know pretty well has the responsibility of caring for her elderly mother. To allow her to do this, she works nights at a convenience store. Her store was the victim of an attempted armed robbery. Fortunately, she had the store doors locked. Her fear could be read as she wrote of the man, brandishing a gun and pulling on the doors in an attempt to get inside the store.
The suspect ran before "more police and tracking dogs that I have ever seen in one place," descended on her store. The stander's description helped police to make an arrest as another store was being robbed.
I did not sense what words of comfort God had for me to send back to this terrified stander, so I decided to wait for Charlyne to read the message before replying.
The next step in my morning routine was to discover my stander of the day. This comes as a system generated email, giving the stander, their state and spouse's name, along with our file number. I opened the email and discovered my stander of the day was the female robbery victim in Virginia.
Have you experienced the moments when you know God was at work in a situation? This was one of them. I was randomly assigned that name at 1:00 A.M. and the stander did not send her email until four hours later. I cannot imagine the odds of her name being selected for today.
God taught me my first lesson of the day before He brought the sun up on this day. While I was seeking the right verses, or the right words, to share with a stander who had almost been robbed, the Lord was saying, "Just pray for her."
How many times this day will you and I face situations where we feel our human experience or knowledge needs to be interjected? For many of these, God might be whispering, "Just pray."
I think I will just pray.
