Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. Isaiah 26:3
On Thursday morning, I looked at my calendar for the rest of the week. That day I planned to spend the day watching three little children. On Friday, I would spend most of the day decorating for our Mother-Daughter banquet. On Saturday I was speaking at another church’s Mother’s Day Luncheon. In the afternoon two sets of guests were arriving – one couple and one family of five. In the evening, we had our own Mother-Daughter banquet. I also needed to put together the worship bulletin for Sunday morning and figure out what to do about meals on Sunday. I didn’t have enough food in the house to feed dinner to seven additional people, so I needed to make a grocery store run too.
I looked around the house at the cleaning that still needed to be done so that the guests would have clean rooms and bathrooms. I looked again at my calendar and said to the Lord, “Lord, you see my calendar. I don’t see how I can possibly get it all done. But you said that your yolk is easy and your burden is light. So I give to you my schedule and ask you to compress the responsibilities into the hours I have. And I give you any expectations that are not Yours, but my own pride.”
I got up from my prayer time confident that God would work things out. I went to school to meet the mother of the three children and pick up her preschoolers. She told me that her schedule had changed and she would meet me at lunch to pick up her children. Suddenly I had an afternoon free. God was already answering my prayers.
On Friday I went to church to decorate. A friend and her children met me there. As we were decorating, she asked me if she could bring lunch to church on Sunday to feed my houseful of guests. Once again, I saw God step in to answer my prayers.
That evening at 6:00, I looked at the few things that still needed to be done at church and called my husband. “I still have one errand to run, more napkins to fold, an arch to finish, and I haven’t done anything about supper.”
He responded, “Would you like me to come and help?”
"I would love it!" I exclaimed. Once again, I saw God’s answer to my prayer. Charlie came and we finished.
The next morning, I had enough time to finish cleaning and get ready for the rest of my day. I still needed to stop at the grocery store to make sure I had enough food for breakfast. I also still needed to finish a game I was creating and set out the place cards. I trusted that there would be time enough in the afternoon to get all of that done.
When I returned from my speaking engagement, a box of bagels sat on the table. My husband had attended a breakfast meeting that morning. When the host church heard about our guests, they gave him the leftover bagels. That supplemented my breakfast food enough that I would not have to go to the grocery store that day.
This morning I read Isaiah 26:3. I marveled at the peace I experienced over the past four days. While my schedule was non-stop from morning to late night every day, I did not feel overwhelmed. God had truly given me His peace. He had also gone beyond what I could have dreamed when I prayed that simple prayer on Thursday morning by taking care of so many details in my life.
So today I give Him praise for His wise management of my schedule and for giving me the grace to trust Him so that I could be at peace during all the busy-ness.
