My daughter, Sarah, and I frequented the library when she was a little girl. We both loved to read and enjoyed hunting for good books. One day, she borrowed a Nancy Drew mystery and started reading it as soon as we got home. The next day, it vanished.
We searched in all the usual places and interrogated all the usual suspects. Either Nancy vaporized or someone broke into our house and took nothing but the book.
Sarah started reading another book, and I tore the house apart in search of the missing sleuth. Nancy Drew had completely checked out.
The due date arrived.
As I returned by car from dropping Sarah at the school bus that morning, I muttered to no one in particular, “The library is straight ahead. If I had that Nancy Drew book, I could take it there right now.”
Instead, I made a right turn toward home and grumbled, “But it’s nowhere to be found and I am going to end up having to pay for it.”
That’s when a thought interrupted me. I “heard” these words in my head:
You are going to find the book today.
I immediately recognized it as the voice of God. It wasn’t an audible sound, but the thought suddenly introduced into my head was not my own. While my husband says I own “the red phone,” implying I have direct access to the Throne of Grace, I honestly don’t hear from God that directly on a regular basis. So it shocked me into silence.
I walked in the door from my garage, and asked loudly enough for God to hear me, “That was You in the car, wasn’t it?” I “heard” these words again:
You are going to find the book today.
As I slowly moved from the kitchen to the family room to the hall toward the bedrooms, I felt like my kids on the hunt for their Easter baskets. You’re getting warmer. You’re getting colder… I finally made my way to my bedroom, looked up at the ceiling and said, “Is it in here?”
Even though no one could hear me, I felt very silly. What on earth did I expect in reply? That’s when God’s voice gently teased. (There’s no better way to describe the tone of the thought that popped into my head.) “It’s caught at the foot of your bed between the sheets.”
My bed didn’t have a footboard, so I batted my hand along the end of the mattress until I felt a solid, rectangular object. Beside myself with wonder, I tore off the sheets and there it was.
Nancy Drew had been hiding under my covers for two weeks!
I held the book in the air and queried the ceiling. “Why didn’t You tell me where it was earlier?”
God replied, “Because it wasn’t due until today.”
I fell onto the bed rocking with laughter and hooted, “That’s what I get for not washing the sheets for two weeks!”
God must have known I needed a good laugh.
He will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy.
— Job 8:21 NIV
I drove to the library with Nancy Drew on the seat beside me. Shaking my head over the unusual exchange, another thought invaded my head, which set it to nodding:
I never miss a due date. I am always right on time.
