What Do You See?

I did not know whether I was ready to write about this or not. I figured I would wait until the whole thing had been worked out before telling very many people about it. However, upon further thought I realized that this could be a great opportunity to publicly display the works of God in my life. I mean, that's one of the reasons I have this blog anyway.

Last week for my AP English class I had an assignment due. Wednesday I was to turn in a ten-page research paper. I wasn't too thrilled with the assignment from the beginning. I was dreading it long before we were even given the specific assignment. I have never in my entire life written ten pages for one paper. The research papers I have written in the past were terribly under par because I never really knew how to research; where do I begin, where do I look, what am I looking for? Suffice it to say that I was thinking this whole thing would be a bust.
I started looking. My topic: Birth order psychology. I had read a couple books on the subject prior to the assignment. I did some online research and found a few interesting articles on the subject. Finally I began to put my knowledge on the paper (well, on the computer at least). I started, and it kept coming. I wrote it out in chunks. One chunk this day, a bigger chunk the next, a smaller chunk the next day. Slowly it began to come together.
Monday night, two days before the due date, I had all ten pages written out. All I had to do then was to go over it and revise it to perfection. I still had to put my works cited page together, but that didn't take long at all.
Tuesday I took the floppy disc with the paper on it to school. I got my teacher to help me make sure the works cited page was written out correctly. Everything was looking great. I was going to get home from school and go strait to work on editing the paper.
I got home, put the disc in the computer, started to open up the file to the disc. Nothing happened. I checked the properties of the disc. It said that it couldn't read the disc at all. This was my only copy of the entire paper. I had the first four pages saved to my hard drive. Other than that I had nothing. The floppy wouldn't work. Nothing could be done. It was due the next day. There was no time to re-write the entire paper.
Long story short (too late for that) I turned my disc into the school tech-guy. He's been working on it over the weekend. There is a chance that he can restore the disc, but at this point nothing is certain.

So, what is my point in all this? Sure, it's a great way to document this most obnoxious occasion. I'll never be able to forget it now. But that isn't my reason for writing this here. I know that there are some who read my blog who already know that God is working in everyone's life, and to those this post has a different message. But it is not to those that I write this particular post. It is to the people that do not yet realize the magnitude of God's work in the lives of his believers.
You might say, "Oh, Yeah, what a great God. He wipes your home work out and you expect me to think this guy is on your side?" To that I would answer yes. The point is not that the home work was lost. There are actually two points.
The first is something that has already happened and that I already told you about. I have never written a paper the likes of this one before. I have no experience. I didn't even know what I was doing. It was God that gave me the paper I had. Just after finishing it I was ecstatic because God had provided for me yet again. Without His help there would have been no paper to loose. The last month has been really hectic for me. Unless God's hand had been orchestrating every little piece of my life I wouldn't have even had the time to write the paper. God provided. He is on my side...because I am on his side.
The second part is something that has yet to unfold. It is true that my paper has disappeared. And for a while after learning of its vanishing I was in shock and generally not happy. For a moment I was going to start asking God why He would do that to me? But for the last year I have seen God's faithfulness through the most seemingly chaotic times. God has never failed to provide for me precisely what I needed. So, before I began to question Him I decided to trust him. With his promise to provide for my needs and the kind words of a friend (you know who you are, thank you) God was able to put my mind at peace. I do not hold it against Him. In fact I now feel more blessed than when I had finished the paper.
Now I only look forward to seeing what God is going to do in this. The story is not yet complete. That is why I write this now. I believe that God is going to do something great with this, and I wanted to write about it before his work was complete so that you all could see with me the great work of God.