Waiting in Prayer

Psalm 5:3

When our Wheels for the World team was in Peru, we met Angelica Ramirez, a twenty-five-year-old woman who had cerebral palsy and epilepsy since birth. For most of her life, she had laid in bed all day — her only entertainment was watching the shaft of the sun move across her room. On the morning of our wheelchair distribution, Angelica’s mother wrapped her daughter in a white mattress pad so that her brother could carry her down the mountain. They were hoping to receive a wheelchair.

Our team happened to have a recliner wheelchair with an extended head rest (we don’t usually take these sorts of highly customized chairs on trips). As Angelica was placed in this particular chair, everyone gasped. It fit perfectly. When our team gave Angelica’s mother a Bible in the Spanish language, she broke down and began sobbing. “God has answered my prayer,” she said through an interpreter. We smiled, thinking she meant the Bible. But the woman shook her head and explained, “I want you to understand that I have been praying for 20 years for a wheelchair for my daughter and today — Gloria al Dios – God has answered my plea. Now I can take my daughter to church. I won’t have to worry about carrying her!”

If God answers your prayer immediately, be thankful; if it’s denied, be patient; if you are to wait, remain eager and expectant. Angelica’s story taught me something fresh about laying our requests before God: He invites us to have an expectant attitude when we pray. He wants us to be hopeful and eager — even if the answer is delayed for twenty years! Why such a delay? Only God knows, but I know this: He provided a perfect wheelchair hand-tailored for Angelica, and that Peruvian mother experienced twenty times the joy.