One sunny afternoon, I pushed my three-year-old granddaughter Mallory on her swing. Soon tired of swinging, she hopped off the swing and scampered up the ladder to the slide.
Mallory soon discovered she had a problem: the slide was too hot from the sunshine for her to rest her bare legs against the metal so she could slide down. Compounding her dilemma, she lacked the necessary coordination to retrace her climb back down the ladder.
I walked toward the slide, thinking she would ask me to lift her off. But without warning, Mallory leaped through the air toward me. I wrapped my arms around her just as she latched onto me. She had chosen me as an escape from her perch atop the slide.
“You catched me!” Mallory shouted. “Momma Jo, I love you,” she said.
I remembered a time I made a leap of faith into God’s arms. Thirteen years earlier, I watched meningitis suck precious life from the still form of Paige, my college-age daughter. Lying curled in a fetal position in her hospital bed, my daughter moved only her eyes. She looked up at me and whispered, “Mother, this may be my time to die.”
“Darling, it may be.” I held her limp hand in mine and leaned closer. No panic or fear registered in her words or in her fevered eyes. She shared a labored smile and slowly closed her swollen eyes. I didn’t curse God or offer Him any arguments. Nor did I attempt to bargain with Him to spare Paige’s life. Just as Mallory had felt secure in my catching her, I trusted God for His comfort and everlasting strength to catch me.
By the next day, Paige’s health had made an unbelievable change for the better, and two days later she was released from her doctor’s care. God had rescued my daughter. I breathed, “God, I love You!”
God promises to be with us always at our exact moment of need. If we accept His promises with the innocence and trust of a little child, we can know the security of the “peace of God, which transcends all understanding.”
Trust in Him.
(Photo courtesy of microsoft office.)
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Jo Huddleston is a multi-published author who writes novels inspired by her fascination with the 1950s and her love of her Native American South. Novels in her endearing Caney Creek series, her West Virginia Mountains series, as well as her stand-alone release, Tidewater Summer, are sweet Southern romance novels. Jo’s devotions appear in eight anthologies, and she has written devotions on assignment and freelance for the following daily devotionals: Devotions, Open Windows, Pathways to God, The Quiet Hour, The Secret Place, and The Upper Room. Visit Jo at www.johuddleston.com where you can read first chapters of her novels and novellas.