To God be the Glory

When we traveled home last year on our 1,000 km trip after a blessed happy conference, we felt rather annoyed after hitting a reflector post at the side of the road, which scraped off a lot of paint on the front bumperbar. Yet we continued our journey, trying to watch the road more closely.

After arriving home, our son Toby, having nothing much to do being unemployed, offered to sand and spray paint the bumperbar, which we gladly accepted. He did a beautiful job. Yes, this was actually our problem; Toby had been unemployed for quite some time, having only some part time work occasionally. I had prayed for him already for a long time, but my prayers seemed to be unanswered. If he only would pray too, I thought, maybe then the Lord would answer sooner. Yet I continued to pray for him, for the Lord is surely merciful.

A few weeks later, I brought home a heavy load of fencing material with the trailer, since we wanted to fence our three acre property, because our children had begged for a long time for a horse. As I slowed down in our steep driveway, going down to the house, the trailer coupling became undone and pushed into the tailgate of our station wagon. I was upset. The insurance company wanted two quotes before they would pay for the repair, so I told Toby, “You come with me to town, to look for work at the Panelbeater shops that I get quotes from,” which he gladly did. We actually got four quotes, just trying to give Toby a better chance.

The manager at the first and largest Panelbeater shop was very impressed with Toby’s spray painting of the bumperbar. Toby also showed him photos of previous cars he had painted. “We may give you a job, being so talented, come back after the weekend.”

And still Toby did not get the job, to his great disappointment. “I’ll never get a job,” he lamented, “I think I’ll retire.” This is not an encouraging prospect for a young 23 year old.

I kept thinking of the Bible text, “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.” This reads so easy, but sometimes we wonder why does everything seemingly have to go wrong? Why do some prayers never get answered? Yet I made up my mind to keep praying and trusting the Lord, and assuring Toby that he will have a job very soon, no matter how many people were unemployed.

Two months later he went back to the same Smash repairer and to his great joy they offered him a one-week work experience (unpaid). “That’s a foot in the door,” Toby thought, and he did his very best.

After the first day the manager said: “Today we got as much work done as we normally do in two days.” And two days later he said in front of most of the 25 employees that Toby does a far better job than many qualified workers have done before and that he is employed full time from now on. Can you imagine how happy he was? And now three months later he is still happy there. It really showed me to persevere in prayer and to trust in the Lord when things seem to go wrong. He is working things out for our good and for His name’s glory. I really want to praise Him for it.