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About
the Book
Table of Contents
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Part VII
Part VIII
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Part VII: One Man's Answers
to Prayer
Chapter 2
What Can We Pray About?
IN THE PAST
I have often been chided by friends who did not know the Lord,
for praying about trivial things. Usually people say, "Oh,
don't you think that it is a little childish to expect God to
be concerned about such unimportant details of your personal
life?" Sometimes they would add, "After all, you wouldn't
expect the king to bother himself with such little things."
True. But it makes a difference if the King happens to be my
Father. We tend to be ready enough to say, Is anything too hard
for the Lord? Out of my own experience, I would ask in the
same spirit, Is anything too small for the Lord? To both,
the answer seems to me to be, No!
Looking over the record I have
kept, I am still amazed at my Father's condescension, and I honestly
doubt whether anything is too small to be the subject
of prayer. I have a few illustrations that will make you smile:
only I should emphasize again that some of these were during
the worst years of the Depression in Canada when cents were almost
as important as dollars are now, pennies like pounds. I have
to elaborate the circumstances a little in some cases.
One summer between
university terms, I managed to get a job dispensing blocks of
ice from a small ice station, one of many scattered around the
city of Toronto. A 25-pound block of ice was 6 cents and a 50-pound
block was 11 cents. I don't know why the odd figure...But it
was very important always to have coppers for change, for the
ice company that ran these stations and kept them supplied had
considerable competition from other companies in the city. Each
station was really a giant icebox with a little lean-to attached
for the attendant.
 pg
1 of 10 
Not to have change could
mean the loss of a number of early sales and a low tally for
the day, and in those times, one's job was continually in jeopardy.
On this particular
morning, I had no personal resources, and the small-change kitty
we were allowed to retain from the previous day had somehow ended
up with no pennies either. I went to a local store, but they
could spare none. I sat down at the ice station a little troubled,
but decided to pray about it. Almost immediately, the storekeeper
sent his son across with 5 coppers just received unexpectedly.
Then a man came up for 50 pounds of ice, the first customer that
morning, with 6 coppers and a nickel. The next customer came
for 50 pounds, also with 6 coppers and a nickel! This was really
exceptional, because most people only had small ice-boxes in
those days.
Imagine my surprise
when a third customer came for 50 pounds and handed me 6 coppers
and a nickel. It is scarcely believable, but the next customer
-- the fourth man in a row -- did precisely the same thing. So
I now had 29 coppers!
I never recall
this little incident without thinking of the Flood for some reason:
but more seriously, it does make me think of the words in the
original Greek of II Corinthians 9:7 which quite literally could
be translated, "God loves a hilarious giver"
-- because He is one Himself!
Let me give another
little illustration of this aspect of God's giving hilariously.
I used to play on the cricket team for Toc H, an army club with
quite an active program at the time. Cricket is not the same
as baseball, and the score for the team can run into the hundreds;
even one player can score a hundred runs or more. On the occasion
I have in mind, we were doing very badly indeed: in fact, we
had scored only 35 runs and we were all out. Unlike cricket as
a rule, this particular game was very unpleasant because the
opposing team was behaving in what was always considered in cricket
a very unsportsmanlike manner. Our players were put out one after
the other by various shady means which are completely out of
place in any decent cricket match.
I said to the padre
who was captain of our team, "Do you believe in prayer?"
He was rather surprised, and a little amused, I think. But as
we walked out to the field for our opponent's turn at bat, he
looked at me and said, "Sometimes."
To make a long
story short, or perhaps to make a short story even shorter, this
is what happened. In the first 6 bowls they scored 9 runs right
off -- which looked promising for them but
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not for us. But then
one man was put out. By the eighteenth bowl (the third "over"),
the second man was out. In 3 more bowls a third man was out.
Then came the most unpleasant character on their team, who apparently
was considered quite a notable player. He was out on the first
ball! Their second-best man came in next and was out for 3 runs,
so they now had lost 7 men for a total of 17 runs. Eight men
were out for 18 runs; 9 were out for 20 runs; and the whole team
was out for 21 runs! In less than a half-hour our opponents were
utterly demolished, and yet we learned afterward that they had
been winning every game and in the last game had scored 95 with
a loss of only 5 men. (1)
Can it really be
that God answers prayers of this kind? I believe He did: although
looking at my record of the event at the time, I don't really
think I prayed that we might win. I'm not sure what I
prayed for at the time. But God is surely a hilarious giver sometimes.
Here is another
illustration of the Lord's faithfulness in a very concrete way.
While I was in residence in university, I established a wonderful
friendship with a Hebrew Christian, Morris Kaminsky He was a
much more mature Christian than I. He used to put his arm on
my shoulder when I had misbehaved and say, "Art, I love
your soul but I hate your ways!" One Sunday evening we went
together to High Park Baptist Church in Toronto and shortly after
the service had started, I suddenly realized that I had no collection
money. Actually I had a two-dollar bill, but it was the only
money I had to my name. This was enough to last me for a week
or more of normal expenses in those days. I was also facing the
need on Monday to go down to the registrar's office and pay my
ten-dollar examination fee for the year. Failing this, I could
not write the examinations and would lose my year. I'm afraid
that as the service progressed, I was more pre-occupied with
this problem than with what was happening in the church; but
I did finally come to the conclusion that I ought to trust the
Lord and put in the whole two dollars. I would think that, at
that time, five cents was all that most people put into the offering.
The plate came around, and there went my two-dollar bill.
The next morning
I went over to University College to attend one lecture, since
the registrar's office was not open till ten o'clock. On my way
over to the college, I met a professor with whom I
1. I hope my English friends will excuse the
terminology in this account which I adopted for the sake of many
readers to whom the correct terminology would have been almost
meaningless.
pg.3
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had been talking
about the Lord a few days before. He stopped me and with some
diffidence gave me an envelope: in it was a ten-dollar bill,
the amount I needed to pay my examination fee. He had no idea
whatever of my specific needs.
A couple of years
later, on the spur of the moment, I did what seemed a very foolish
thing: I gave to a man on the street, who seemed to me such a
pitiful sight, a five-dollar bill I had reserved to buy some
little extras for Christmas, about a week away. That afternoon
I had to go downtown. As I was walking along Adelaide St. West
when the street was crowded with Christmas shoppers, I happened
to look down at a step leading into a building (in my journal
I noted it was No. 33) and there, in full view of people walking
in and out of the building and passing it on the sidewalk, was
a five-dollar bill and a ten-dollar bill -- simply lying there!
It was almost unbelievable. Somehow, nobody was noticing these
two bills . . . in the very depths of the Depression years!
I notice in my
records many occasions upon which the Lord allowed me to recover
things I had lost. Usually they were things which had no "spiritual"
value yet were important in their way. They were such small things
as a rule. Take the following case as an illustration. This is
how I wrote it down:
A few days ago I lost my fountain
pen, a special one, while playing football in an open field.
How impossible to find such an item, in long grass well tramped
over! Yet as I went back to look for it, I said to the Lord that
He could help me to find it if He would. So I walked to
the centre of the field, took a dozen steps in one direction,
and there it was at my feet -- after 30 seconds of search! Lord,
how good Thou art to me -- and why, Lord?
Sometimes the
Lord's goodness was expressed in unsought ways. Now and then
these occasions were related to circumstances in which one might
perhaps have expected the Lord to act, but in other cases
they expressed an element of pure kindness on His part. Let me
give a few examples of provision which in some ways might be
viewed as "expected," and then one or two examples
of unexpected kindness
In 1933, the very worst year of
the Depression in Saskatchewan where its effects were unbelievably
severe, we were reduced to living on bread and porridge, occasionally
some apples to make into a sauce, and upon even rarer occasions
a few potatoes. It is amazing what one can accept as standard
fare! Well, just before Christmas we had received a gift of four
or five potatoes
pg.4
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and a few apples. They
did not seem to be the makings of a traditional Christmas dinner,
but we were thankful. A morning or two later, I looked out the
window and saw a flock of prairie chickens fly over an orchard
which was between us and a very near neighbouring farmer, Richard
Ellison, with whom we had wonderful times of fellowship. One
of these birds for some reason landed in an apple tree while
the rest of them flew on.
We had no means
of shooting it, and I'm not much of a shot anyway. Moreover,
it was at least two hundred feet away. But it was clearly visible
because there were no leaves on the trees. I thought it just
possible that I could run across to Dick Ellison's house without
disturbing the bird and get him to try to shoot it for us. However,
as I opened our door, Dick's hired man, Fred, happened to come
out on their back porch at the same moment. I signaled to him
and pointed across the orchard to the prairie chicken, still
sitting well exposed on a branch. He caught on immediately, disappeared
quickly, and returned with a rifle. Though he told me afterward
that he too was not a particularly good shot, he succeeded in
shooting it straight through the head. It dropped without a movement:
when we picked it up, it proved to be one of the biggest prairie
chickens I have ever seen. And so we had our Christmas dinner
of roast potatoes and prairie chicken and baked apples.
This was pure goodness
on the Lord's part, and it really involved a whole series of
events, for I only "happened" to look out the window,
and it only "happened" that one bird stayed behind
for some reason, and it only "happened" that Fred came
out on the back porch at that very moment, and it only "happened"
that he shot it in the head and left its body unmarred in any
way. Or did it only "happen?"
Here is another
incident which occurred a few years later. I used to ride down
to university on a bicycle -- old when I inherited it and certainly
nearing the end of its useful life by this time. One morning
I rode down to Knox Church in Toronto to visit with Christie
Innis, the minister. I parked my bicycle at the curb outside
the church office. Curiously, in those days one could safely
leave a bicycle unlocked . . . though so many people were desperately
in need.
When I came out
about a half-hour later, my bicycle was lying at the curb a total
wreck: it had evidently been run over by a car. It was a severe
loss in the circumstances. But as I looked at
pg.5
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what was left of it,
I noticed a little slip of paper had been pushed into one of
the open handlebar ends. On it was written the words, "Dis
is the nobbin of the car." Clearly the writer was not exactly
an educated man, but he must have seen what had happened, and
the Lord prompted him to send me this little message. At any
rate, a lawyer friend of mine wrote a note to the owner of the
car demanding some compensation for me. No doubt the driver was
surprised that he had been seen, but there was not much he could
do but replace the bicycle: and it turned out he was actually
well able to do so. And so I had a new bicycle just when mine
was about worn out, and I learned again the truth of the promise
that all things work together for good to them who love the Lord
(Romans 8:28).
Both these provisions
were not really answers to prayer, since I had not really prayed
about them, but they were clear witnesses to the fact that God
delights to care for His children. For all this, there was an
element of need involved in both cases. Yet the following is
a case of rather extraordinary provision in which the aspect
of need did not exist at all.
About thirty years
ago, when my son was just a little boy, somebody gave him a picture
book with a story about some animals. It was not particularly
well printed, but in it was one picture of a mare and her foal
which, to my thinking as a lover of horses, was absolutely beautiful.
I have it yet and it is still in every way as beautiful. As soon
as I saw it, I thought to myself that I would like to take that
page out and preserve it. But this, of course, would have spoiled
the book, and though it was only a child's book, this somehow
seemed an improper thing to do. As the weeks went by I watched
the book slowly deteriorate. The covers became torn, the earlier
pages curled at the edges, and my son scribbled with gay abandon
on every page, both with pencil and crayon. Within a few months,
he had lost interest in this book and it was laid aside with
other discarded toys. One day I picked it up, regretting that
I had not taken the one picture of the horses out of it long
before this. But as I quickly went through it, I found to my
amazement that not every page had been scribbled on. One single
page was unmarked, uncreased, undirtied in any way at all. My
two horses were as clean and perfect as the day they came from
the printer. It was really an extraordinary thing when one looked
at all the other pages in the book. As I said, I still have it;
a wonderful testimony, in my mind, to the kindness of God.
pg.6
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Let
me give one more example of this kind of provision which is essentially
so "unnecessary". During my first university years,
I took a study course in fine art and enjoyed it tremendously.
The professor used slides extensively. One of his slides was
of Constable's painting of Salisbury Cathedral. Gothic architecture
has always kind of overwhelmed me by its sheer beauty, and the
setting of Salisbury Cathedral in this famous painting only increased
this effect. But I had not found in any book that I could afford
a good reproduction of Constable's painting until, one day in
downtown Toronto, I saw a British travel poster, about 18 inches
by 24 inches in size, reproducing this very picture. I went in
at once and asked if I could buy it or obtain a copy somehow.
The proprietor told me that they were only loaned these posters
for display, and they were in short supply and consequently were
circulated among the different travel agencies. He felt that
the chances of obtaining a copy from England were rather slim.
So I abandoned the idea.
But then about
a week later as I was travelling on the streetcar, I spotted
another copy of the same poster -- in a Christian bookstore!
I got off the streetcar at the next stop and went quickly back
to the store and, lo and behold! they were just beginning to
clear the window out to re-decorate it. I asked him what he planned
to do with this poster, and he said, "Oh, I don't know.
Why? Do you want it?" I told him I did indeed. He rolled
it up without hesitation, slipped an elastic band over it, and
gave it to me. He said he had no idea how it had come into their
possession. And, as an example of difference in tastes, he had
no particular interest in it. Like the picture of the horses,
I have this large poster still: framed, lighted, and displayed
to good effect. Had I not seen the picture in this Christian
bookstore from the streetcar window, I'm almost certain it would
have been thrown away. Such is the Lord's kindness.
Frequently, perhaps
more often than not, answers to prayer involve circumstances
which far antedate the specific need that becomes the subject
of our prayers. Some twenty-five years ago we decided, as a family,
to go down to Lunenberg during the summer, hoping to find a house
that could be rented in that historic little place for perhaps
six months or so while I came back to Toronto to continue my
work. We wrote to various official bodies and to the YMCA and
the Salvation Army, asking them if they could give us any leads
for procuring such accommodation, only to receive word back from
each of them that was entirely negative. The Salvation Army
pg.7
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people said, "There
is not a chance -- over fifty families are already waiting to
re-unite in homes here." I don't remember exactly why this
was, except that the war had indeed created this situation all
over the country.
So we went to the
Lord about it, and feeling rather sure that we should make the
trip anyway, we asked the Lord to give us a house that we could
afford to rent already equipped with a radio, a piano, a view
of the harbour, and a separate room for Nigel, my son. And then
we set out.
When, in due time,
we arrived in the little town, we went straight to the office
of the local newspaper. It was down several steps from the sidewalk,
the main street having been gradually elevated in its long history
by accumulated debris. As I went in, an elderly lady went in
immediately ahead of me. She greeted the proprietess by name
and then stood to one side, obviously waiting for me to finish
my business first. The proprietess said to me, "Can I do
something for you?" I told her what I wanted: namely, to
put a little advertisement in her paper. But she shook her head
and said, "I'm afraid it would be a waste of money."
But then
the elderly lady said, "Well, Mrs. [I didn't write down
her name], as a matter of fact I had thought of going to live
with my sister for a while and renting the house. I came to put
an ad in the
paper. . . ."
Well, we drove
back with her to her house! It had a piano, a radio, a
room for Nigel, a very nice little garden, and it overlooked
the harbour. It was spotlessly clean and shipshape, her late
husband having been a sea captain. It cost us thirty dollars
per month for rent. It is doubtful whether the Lord could have
more completely and precisely timed everything and prepared the
way for us.
Another rather
wonderful case of pre-vision occurred in connection with a book
I particularly wanted. During my studies of the Hebrew language,
we were naturally introduced to some Hebrew writings which, though
not modern, are still actively in use. One of the textbooks we
used had to be obtained from the library, being rather difficult
to purchase. I don't know why this was, but I tried to get hold
of a copy for my own library without success. I tried several
sources of Jewish publications, equally without success. The
little book was referred to in class as Pirke Aboth, which
was usually interpreted into English as "Prayers of the
Fathers." It was of particular
pg.8
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interest to me because it showed
that in one respect at least, the Authorized Version was perfectly justified
in rendering the Greek word aion ( ) as "world," this particular Greek word
being the translation used by the Septuagint for the Hebrew word 'olam
( ). The word 'olam
in many of the prayers which appeared in this little book clearly
meant "world" or "society" and was used in such phrases
as "in this world" or "in the world to come." The
Jewish people themselves so understood it. The importance of this was
that, at the time, there was considerable controversy among us about the
meaning of these words aion and 'olam in connetcion with
the question of eternal punishment. The point of this
little introduction is that I was particularly anxious to obtain a copy
of this prayer book somehow, and I wrote to many secondhand bookstores
during the next year and a half without any success. Then one day a very
dear Christian lady phoned me and said, "Arthur, in rummaging around
in the attic, I came across a little book that might interest you. I have
no idea where it came from, but I think it is in Hebrew."
I hardly need to
say that it was a copy of Pirke Aboth. It was badly battered,
yet easily repaired. How many years ago did the Lord arrange
for that little book to be buried up there in the attic of a
great big old house on Avenue Road in Toronto, only to be re-discovered
under these particular circumstances?
I add one more case of the timing
of the Lord's goodness. After the end of World War II, I bought
a piece of property in Muskoka and built a summer cottage in
a little bay which, at the time, could not be reached with a
car. I have always loved an open fireplace, and so I provided
the necessary foundations to put one in it. My plan was to install
a Heatilator fireplace, a prefabricated, double-walled, heavy
sheet metal frame, around which one builds up with stone, or
any other material, for decorative and architectural reasons.
It is the heart of the system, and in Canada many fireplaces
are constructed in this way. Such metal units are quite heavy,
and the one we planned to use must have weighed close to two
hundred pounds.
I rented a trailer
to convey the unit to the site from Toronto, realizing that it
would have to be carried the last one hundred to two hundred
yards through the woods in some other way. We had thought that
perhaps two of us could roll it over and over between the trees,
but when we got there, we soon found this was impossible. It
was simply too heavy for us. In the meantime we were about a
mile from the nearest source of help, and we were newcomers without
acquaintances. It looked as though, having got it off the trailer,
we were going to have to leave it beside it at the end of the
road until we could come up again with more friends. And in the
meantime, it would have been an invitation to anyone who happened
to discover it to load it onto his own trailer and make off with
it.
pg.9
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In my record I wrote, "Well, we unloaded everything
else and carried it into the cottage. We had no sooner done this
than we heard voices, and two of our old
friends from the Engineering Department Of the University of
Toronto stood at the door! They were just on
their way up to their own cottage on a motorcycle trip and had
dropped by for fun to see how the site was coming along. Of course,
the three of us carried the fireplace in and twenty minutes later
they were gone! Praise the Lord!!"
I do not think
for one moment that my own experience of the Lord in such ways
is at all unique, though I may have made it look that way. I
do think, however, that it is a tremendously worthwhile thing
to keep a record like this. No matter how vivid an experience
is at the time, later events overlie it and the details become
merged with other details until one has only a growing impression
that the Lord is always there behind the scenes, but one can
no longer testify to His faithfulness in this kind of concrete
way that inspires others to prove Him for themselves. Yet He
invites us to do this (Malachi 3:10). I know there are occasions
upon which "we have not because we ask not" (James
4:3): but I also believe that there are occasions when we fail
to recognize that we do have, when we receive answers
to our prayers but because of the busy-ness of life fail to perceive
them for what they are. The result is that we become less and
less thankful.
There is a danger,
as I know from experience, of harping on the Lord's constant
grace and kindness, of developing a kind of spiritual pride and
as a consequence, of becoming critical of others who are not
as thankful as we are ourselves. Such is human nature that we
are easily capable of turning every blessing into a hindrance.
But I think the risk is worth taking. And I believe that the
very effort of writing down what the Lord has been doing can
help us to perceive more clearly, not only what He has been doing,
but the ways in which He acts.
Count your blessings, name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.
It will indeed!
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Copyright © 1988 Evelyn White. All rights
reserved
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