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On Faith
Cheryl A.F. Okimoto
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Bombarding heaven will bring blessings
One quiet Saturday morning in early January, some families in Fernley, Nev., woke up and rolled out of bed only to put their feet in icy floodwaters rather than on their nice dry carpet. In the early morning hours, a levee had burst, sending a wall of water toward the sleeping town. This was just a blip on the radar screen for many Hawaii residents, but it caused us a few anxious moments until we found out that my brother-in-law's home wasn't in the flood zone.
Gophers, they say, probably undermined the levee so that it could not hold back the rain from the winter storm that had just rolled past. Because of our family connection in Fernley, I couldn't stop thinking about the flood. For most of the world, it really doesn't even qualify as news, but for a couple of thousand people in Fernley, it was a life-changing event. And gophers, they say, were responsible.
I need some gophers in my life, because I've been waiting for a flood. No, not dirty waters, but a flood of blessings. I'm looking for something like the prophet Malachi spoke of: "'Test me in this,' says the Lord Almighty, 'and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.'"
I'd really like to have eight feet of blessings flood into my home. So I think I'm going to find some gophers. I'm going to attack that levee that's holding back my blessings from racing through the town and flooding the streets.
My gophers are my prayers. The more prayers I send heavenward, the more that levee gets riddled with gopher holes, and the weaker it's going to get. One gopher a day isn't going to do it. As it burrows around, the ground will settle again in areas where he hasn't been for a while, and the levee won't be sufficiently weakened.
But if I assail heaven like the widow in Luke who just wouldn't shut up, that levee is going to be riddled by the gopher holes of my prayers. And when the time is right, God's going to send my winter storm, the one that the weakened levee can no longer hold back.
And what's really cool is that God's blessings aren't going to just flood my home, they will flood the entire neighborhood. My gopher-prayers will bring blessings to many others, too. Some will get more of the blessings, others get less and some will stand on the fringes and stare in wonder. But the blessings will come. God promised.
I pray that the blessings will come to Fernley, Nev., that those who lost so much to the gophers in January will receive a hundredfold what they have lost. Let us send our prayer-gophers out for them, and for the other needy people of our world -- from the ones who live down the street to those who live across the world.
May the gophers flood us all!
Cheryl A.F. Okimoto is creative director of the Island Christian Guide.