,
next three days wandering around his farm looking for it. Finally, he asked the
Lord to help him find it, and he walked directly to the tool which was hidden
in tall grass. He knew that he never would have found it on his own before
driving over it and wrecking his tractor or mower.
Every fall when it was time to sell cattle at the local auction mart so he
could earn an income for the family, he would ask the Lord to help him get a
fair price so he could pay off his debt to the bank and not lose the farm, leaving
his family homeless. He told us that many times he watched the cattle price
spike when he sold his cattle, and he would make enough to pay his loan to
the bank with a little bit extra to spare. I remember being with my Dad as a
teen during a cattle auction when this happened and the auctioneer asked him
publicly what he was feeding his cattle to make the prices go up.
Perhaps it was from situations like these that my father learned not to
waste time trying to do things without the Lord’s help. He and my mother
taught us to ask the Lord directly for help whenever we needed it. They also
stressed the idea that we needed to obey everything that the Lord asks of us, so
that the Lord could work in our lives.
Living with this attitude of trusting the Lord was normal for me because
I grew up with this idea. Did my Dad learn this idea from the New Church?
It would be nice if I could say yes, but he didn’t grow up in the New Church.
His family was not particularly religious, but he did have one aunt who was
religious and she made sure she taught him to pray to the Lord directly with
any and all of his concerns.
What if my Dad chose not to listen to his aunt who consistently taught
him to pray directly to the Lord for help? What if he did not teach this idea to
family? What if we had lived our lives without the knowledge that we can pray
to the Lord and He can help us in times of distress? What if any of us had faced
difficulties that felt bigger than we can handle? What tools would we have to
face these troubles?
If we chose to rule out asking the Lord to help us with the specific problems
in our lives and we had not met others who knew enough to remind us to do
this, then we could easily become overwhelmed with the problems that we face
and have nothing to help us face them. We could easily feel unstable, empty,
hopeless and full of despair. But if we have the tools to deal with life’s problems,
then we can feel stable, peaceful, grateful and hopeful, even if we don’t have
everything we want.
So how can we go from feeling overwhelmed and that we do not have
what it takes to deal with a big problem to feeling like we can handle it? I think
the solution comes down to acknowledging that the Lord already knows the
solution to the problem and if we ask for His help through prayer He can help
us discover a solution, even if the problem feels huge and unsolvable. The Lord
153