One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord. Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.

In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand. Sometimes there were two sets of footprints, other times there was one only.

This bothered me because I noticed that during the low periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish, sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints, so I said to the Lord,

“You promised me Lord,
that if I followed you, you would walk with me always. But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life there has only been one set of footprints in the sand. Why, when I needed you most, have you not been there for me?”

The Lord replied, “The years when you have seen only one set of footprints, my child, is when I carried you.”

---

Mary Stevenson, 1936

Summer08Camp Jale

“Irreverent Manipulation”

One day a young boy named Benjamin wrote a prayer-letter to God to ask for a baby sister. “Dear God, I’ve been a very good boy. . .” and then stopped, thinking that God might not be convinced by his claim. Taking a new sheet of paper, he began again, “Dear God, most of the time, I’ve been good. . .” Again he stopped, dissatisfied that his plea was not sufficiently moving. After a few thoughtful moments, the young boy got a towel from the linen closet and laid it carefully on a chair in the living room. Then he went to the mantle over the fireplace and very slowly lifted down the statue of Mary. He had often seen his mother carefully dust the statue and knew it to be a special family heirloom. Very gently, Benjamin placed the Madonna in the middle of the towel, carefully folding over the edges. Then, after he secured the towel with rubber bands, he carried his parcel back to his desk, took another piece of paper and made his third attempt at a letter. . . “Dear God, if you ever want to see your mother again. . .”

-Robert Strand

How much does a prayer weigh?

The only man I ever knew who tried to weigh
one still does not know. Once he thought he did. That was when he owned a little grocery store on the west side of town. It was a few weeks before New Years of 1918 when a tired-looking woman came into the store and asked him for enough food to make a dinner for her children. He asked her how much she could afford to spend. "My husband was killed in the war," the woman answered. "I have nothing to offer but a little prayer." The man confesses that he was not very sentimental in those days. A grocery store could not be run like a free breadline. "Write it down," he said with a huff, and turned to attend to othercustomers.To his surprise, the woman pulled a piece of paper from her pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to him over the counter. "I did that during the night, while sitting up with my sick baby." The grocer took the paper before he could recover from his surprise, and then regretted having done so. What would he do with it? What could he say? Then an idea came to him. Without even reading the prayer, he placed the
paper on one side of his old-fashioned weight scales and said, "We shall see how much food this is worth." To his astonishment, the scale would not go down when he put a loaf of bread on the other side. And it still didn't go down as he added more food-anything he could lay his hands on quickly, because people were watching him. His face turned redder the more embarrassed and flustered he became. Finally he said, "Well, that's all the scales will hold. Here's a bag." And he turned away. With a little sob, the woman took the bag and started packing the food, only stopping to dry her eyes on her sleeve from time to time. The grocer tried not to look, but he had given her a big bag and couldn't help but see that it wasn't quite full. Without another word, he tossed a large cheese down the counter. Had he let down his defenses enough to actually look at the woman, he would have been rewarded with a timid smile and look of deepest gratitude. When the woman had gone, the grocer examined his scales, which had worked fine for the previous customer. He never figured out how or when it had happened, but they were broken. The grocer had never seen that woman before, and he never saw her again. But for the rest of his life he remembered her better than any other woman that ever came into his shop, and he always kept that slip of paper with her simple prayer: "Please, God, give us this day our daily bread."

Just as behind every watch there had to be a watch maker, so behind the intricate mechanisms of the universe there had to be a Creator.