Hour-long sessions sweating out toxins in the sauna pass much more swiftly when you have a good book.
The Tapestry by Edith Schaeffer with its 650 large pages will last me many more hours. But I don't mind! Every time I read it I am encouraged in my faith and inspired to trust God more as He weaves together all the seemingly random or ugly threads of my life with those that even I can recognize as beautiful.
In my last reading, Edith talked about God answering a specific prayer of her husband, Francis Schaeffer [Fran] on behalf of a pressing need in their family. This example was one of only two times so far in his life that he had been answered with an audible voice. She interrupted that story with this bit of encouragement:
I myself have never heard a voice [answering my prayer audibly.] I have had many amazing answers to prayer in a diversity of instances... Is there any "more spiritual" or "less spiritual" kind of answer to prayer? I think not. Fran thinks not.
God is a personal God, a very personal Father dealing with us as individual children. When He answers by not healing a tragic illness, by not providing some material thing, by not giving the diploma or the job, and instead gives "grace sufficient" and special courage and strength to continue in the midst of disappointment... Then the "victory" of that answer is just as "spiritual" as the provision of whatever has been prayed for, no matter what form that provision took.
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