Spying the Marvelous (The Conclusion): Claiming the Promise

As soon as her big brother was finished with his inspection, Lizzy crept out from Grandma’s wing and edged closer to the hospital bed where I lay with Hannah Faith. Once her fingers caressed the soft cheeks of her newborn sister, Elizabeth was hooked. No more gazing from across the room, Lizzy wanted the miracle in her hands. With eyes aglow, the three-year-old who had been my “baby” just hours earlier, gathered Hannah into her arms and began to rock and sway. “Rock-a-bye-baby,” she sang, “I’ll love you always…” I know I am a bit biased, but the moment was beautiful.

While I savored the picture of sisterly love, my mind slipped back to a conversation my eldest daughter and I had shared just nine months before. On that particular morning in February, I had watched a little pink “plus” sign appear on the stick of a home pregnancy test. Tickled with my secret, I had decided to keep the news to myself for a while. Three hours later, I stood at a neighborhood gas station pumping fuel and making faces at Lizzy through the mini van window. When I slipped back into the driver’s seat, my chatty two-year-old announced, “Mommy, I just asked God to put a baby sister in your tummy!”

“Oh, really?” I replied with forced casualty. Then just to tease my partial-to-pink daughter, I asked, “And what if God decides to put a baby BROTHER in my tummy instead?”


“Mo-om,” Lizzy laughed. “He can do anything He wants, but I ASKED for a SISTER.”

At the heart of Christmas is a promise fulfilled. God’s children had asked for a Messiah. And those with childlike hearts had believed that when the time was right, their Father would give them exactly what they had asked for. Perhaps it was that childlike faith that allowed Christ’s own mother to rejoice when she learned that God’s answered prayer would come not only for her but through her. “You will become pregnant and give birth to a son… He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High God” (Luke 1:30, 31). Are you, too, waiting on a promise fulfilled? The Bethlehem baby reminds us that God is in the business of answering prayers. Just as my two-year-old told God the desires of her heart from the bowels of a dirty mini van, so we can do the same. You may be too big to climb on Santa’s lap this year, but you will never outgrow the lap of your Heavenly Father. Go ahead, climb on up and whisper a few of your greatest wishes in His ear. Then ask for the faith to wait on His perfectly timed answer.

As for me, I think I’ll keep asking for those new eyes I’ve been wanting- the kind that see the Marvelous!

The Overflow: “Open my eyes that I can see….” Psalm 119:118