As I was praying this morning, and wondering – for the fifty-bazillionth time what it’s okay to believe God for – I thought of the syrophoenician woman who likened the deliverance she requested for her daughter to the crumbs that fell from the master’s table.  Then, in Luke, I read about the leftovers that were collected after feeding the five-thousand…leftovers, that were more than what was given to Him to use in the first place.  And I felt challenged by this picture that God gives of His oversupply, how He lavishly pours out blessing, how the biggest things we can ask Him for are so easy for Him that even those who might seem most undeserving can receive just by drawing near and believing.

I know how hard it can be sometimes to look at circumstances, or at others’ unanswered prayers – or even at our own unanswered prayers – and still believe it’s as simple as having faith.  Questions about timing or a greater good or how God’s will might be different from our own can make it easy to doubt that He’s willing to do even what we believe He has said He will do.  And, it seems, the bigger the request, the greater the temptation to doubt.  But why?  Even when we make requests for things that seem like mountain-moving miracles, compared to His infinite power and goodness, they are like crumbs falling from the feast He has prepared for those invited to His table.

He is Almighty God.  He is sovereign. He is Creator, not just designer, not just builder, but the One who made substance and gave matter its properties and determined how and why everything would work the way it does.  He is limitless.  He holds the oceans in the palm of His hand, and weighs mountains in a scale.  All that He is is beyond human comprehension.

And He is good.  Unendingly good.  Unreservedly good.  Unconditionally good.  How could I ever expect Him to be otherwise?