Little Signs

I have found that God often drops little messages, or signs of encouragement for His Children.  They are often personal, subtle, yet blatant.  The main reason that the fox is my favorite animal is because of a few distinct times in my life when I think God both comforted me and encouraged me by placing one of these creatures in my path.  It isn’t animism or totem worship, any more than Gideon’s fleece or the fish with the coin was.  Why do I share this?  I’ll tell you.

While I was cooking supper tonight Sophie was in her playroom busily working on her ‘project’. She will often work diligently for some time and then come show us what she’s done. This time she called us into the playroom to ‘come see’. There were a bunch of her things wrapped up as only a 5 year old can wrap laying on her chair.

“These are my presents,” she said. “I’m getting rid of some of my toys so Shepherd will get here faster.” She has been right with us as we’ve had 147 Million Orphan sales and yard sales, and doing what we can to pay for this adoption.  Katie and I both teared up.  Sophie was ready to get rid of some of her possessions in order to bring this boy, whom she has never met and will probably fight with…a lot, home.  If that’s not enough to make your throat all lumpy, then she says, “We always say he’s coming home soon, but he never does.  When is he going to be here?  When are we going to China to get him?”

Katie took Sophie over to the wildlife calendar we have on our refrigerator and showed her some of the landmark dates that were going to happen before our tentative trip in August: the 4th of July, Sophie’s birthday, Paw Paw Bunny’s birthday, etc.  Then Katie turned the calendar to August.  You wanna know what the picture for August was?

This is the actual shot.  I found it at the photographer’s website.

As my friend Scott O. says, “God’s got a plan for your plan.”  We would love to be back and home with Shepherd before school starts back in the fall, but for whatever reason, we probably won’t be.  That being said, I am comforted in the fact that our Creator knew our longings from before time began and continually woos us to Him.

He Is There and He Is Not Silent.