Operators Are Standing By

            A few weeks ago, I ordered something from a well-known online company.  I waited a couple of weeks, but did not get it.  I waited another week, and still did not get it.  I did some investigating, and discovered that the company had sent it to my old address in North Sioux City, rather than my current address in Gettysburg.  The reason I had not discovered this earlier is that the notification of shipment had been sent to my old email address, which I can still access but rarely check, rather than my current, active email address.

            I sent the company an email, telling them that the product had been sent to my old address rather than my current one.  They responded, saying that they couldn’t help me because they couldn’t find my order number under my email address.  I wrote back, saying that of course they couldn’t because they’d sent the notification email to the wrong email address.  They responded again, saying that they still couldn’t help me because I hadn’t responded using the email address to which they’d sent the notification.

            Finally, I called the company.  After going through the now-standard computerized list of options and pressing some buttons on my phone, I finally got to talk to a live human being.  To his credit, the person I talked to was very helpful, and we finally go things straightened out.

            As I was going through all this, though, it occurred to me again how amazing it is that we’re allowed to talk to God directly.  All we need to do is pray.  We don’t have to go through a lot of rigamarole.  No computers are involved.  There are no middlemen whatsoever.  We can go directly to God with whatever we need to go to God about; praises, complaints, requests, thanks, whatever.  We also don’t need to worry about God responding to the wrong address.

            It is true, of course, that God does not always give us exactly what we’ve ordered.  We can be sure, though, that God has not made a mistake.  We may think our order has not been processed correctly, but that’s not true.  Something else is involved.  Maybe what we ordered was not the best thing for us.  Maybe the time is not yet right for us to get what we ordered.  There are a lot of times when we don’t understand why our order was not filled immediately, but there’s always a good reason.  When we don’t understand it, we just need to trust that God knows better than we do.

            The best thing, of course, is that when we go directly to God, we don’t have to worry about the charges showing up later on our credit card statement.  Jesus, with his death and resurrection, has paid it all for us already.

            God is always available to us.  That’s pretty awesome.  If you haven’t taken advantage of the opportunity lately, why not talk to God now?  No matter how many calls God gets, the line is always open for each of us.