Answered Prayer

                One month into my stay in Australia, and I have accomplished one of my goals:  To find a simple, reliable, cost-efficient way to the beach at night.  This doesn’t sound so hard, but keep in mind that the beach is a good distance away (at least an hour or two to walk), I do not have a car, buses do not run at night, and I’m too cheap to buy a taxi every time I want to go down.

                This goal was made possible tonight by a very kind and generous gift from some friends at church.  It was after church as we were eating lunch and I had just mentioned in passing that transportation was a bit of a problem for me, how I was considering buying a bike, when they offered me to lend me theirs.  Now, granted, the bike was in a state of disrepair, but their dad, the pastor, had WD-40, a wrench, and an air compressor, so we had it up and running in fifteen minutes.  They even gave me a helmet.

                But let me be clear; it’s a bike.  Not a teleportation pad.  It still takes a fair amount of work to get from res to the beach.  Much more work than I expected.  I had to stop to catch my breath more than once.  The ride down was fine (aside from a few wrong turns), but the ride back was mostly uphill and against the wind.

                The reason I was so excited to go at night should be fairly obvious to anyone who loves the outdoors.  I had the place to myself.  No distractions.  And the stars were out in full bloom. There was no moon tonight; all I had was the stars, a few lights from across the bay and, faintly, two or three spots where the horizon glowed a bit from south across the ocean (perhaps from boats or small islands, but I just don’t know).  I love looking at the Milky Way.  And I found Orion, my favorite constellation (except here, he’s usually upside-down).  Next time, I’m going to look for the Southern Cross.

                So I lay on the beach, looked at the stars, and talked with God.  It was exactly what I needed.

                But it was not the coolest part of my day.  The best part of my day was getting to sit and talk with my friends at lunch.  That was when God talked to me.  I don’t yet have friends at uni (university) with which I can talk freely about God with.  In fact, aside from online communications with friends back home, I hadn’t had a conversation about God with anyone who knows him the way I do in about a month.  That’s been the hardest thing about being here.  It’s one of the things I pray for all the time.  Today, God lifted some of that burden.