Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

A few years ago our family took a vacation out west.  One day we were driving west from South Dakota toward Yellowstone Park.  One of the boys asked,  “What’s that white stuff on top of the mountains?  I said, “It’s Snow.”  Both boys argued it couldn’t be snow it is July and 90 degrees.  I told them that even though it was 90 degrees here it was cold enough on top of the mountain for snoew not to melt.  They continued arguing with me, insisting it was not snow.  I said, “Okay.”  And to myself I said, We’ll see.

After a night in Cody, we decided to return to Billings by the northern route.  As the day wore on, we climbed higher and higher and the air got colder and colder.  Finally we came upon what I was looking for, snow.  I stopped the car and made the boys get out in their shorts to see that their old man was right, it was snow.

Well, I may have been right but I wasn’t righteous.  I enjoyed my triumph a bit too much.  But the opportunity to reflect upon the fact that God’s ways are often as far above and beyond us as the tops of the mountains were from my sons’ understanding and experience.  Too often when we pray, we presume to tell God what God ought to know and do rather than pouring out our hearts and trusting God to do the right thing.  The prayer of the righteous is the prayer of one who prays with complete confidence in God’s lave and mercy.

Delmer Chilton