I have been dabbling in some pretty risky investment vehicles for the last couple of years, and when I say risky, I mean that a craps table is like an AAA bond in comparison. Anyway, in one of those accounts I had stashed a pretty large sum of money and just let it ride for a while, and when I recently went to check on it, it had simply vanished!  My account was there, mind you-it just had a zero balance. Welcome to the brave new world of cryptocurrencies! I tried everything to get the money back: reviewing past transactions, checking the digital block chain, contacting the wallet developers…even, in desperation, rebooting-but all to no avail. In fact, the rebooting effort only served to underline that my computer had been attacked by a malicious virus which would not even allow me to log on.

What to do? Well, I waited until the next day, lit a candle in the icon corner of my house, got on my knees, and said a simple prayer: “Lord, if these problems come from demons, please protect me from them. If they are sent by you, please help me learn from them.” Immediately, I turned on my computer and “Voila!” It booted up perfectly. Then I checked my email messages and one of them was from my “banker”, and it said they’d located the money. I went to my account where the money had been missing, and sure enough, it was all there.

I think that these were miraculous events that happened just because I prayed for them. Of course, if you’re a cynical bastard like I used to be, you’ll just attribute this to coincidence. You’ll say that miracles never happen to you or anyone else. You’ll tell me how it would have happened anyway even if I didn’t pray. You’ll say that even if an omnipotent being existed, something as minor as my little computer problem wouldn’t be of interest to him. That correlation doesn’t equal causation, blah, blah, blah. And you know what? I wouldn’t believe you.

I wouldn’t believe you because He has answered my prayers before about much bigger life issues. I wouldn’t believe you because I don’t believe in coincidences. And I wouldn’t believe you because to deny miracles is to deny God’s word. Indeed, is is to deny the miracle of creation itself.

The Bible tells us that God loves us so much that “even the hairs of (your) head are numbered” (Luke 12:7). If that is so, he cares about us and loves us unconditionally. When we call to Him for help, He answers us. Sometimes it isn’t the answer we want to get: that is certainly true. But His wisdom surpasses our understanding, and we must with all humility accept that we need to submit to His will, not try to make Him subservient to our own.

So does He care about my money or my computer virus? No, don’t be absurd! He doesn’t need my money. Nor does my Mac interest Him much, I would imagine. But He does care about people, and I’m thinking that in this case He helped my unbelief at a time when He knew I really needed it. Of course, I don’t fully understand God’s will, that’s just my puny human interpretation, but nevertheless it does make some sense, because my life actually was going through a lot of turmoil.

After all, in the months leading up to this incident, I’d destroyed my shoulder in a boating accident and was going through some painful post-surgical rehab, I’d lost a ton of money in the stock market, a neighbor was suing me because of a dog bite, I had huge hunks of my skin removed in an effort to stem the spread of skin cancer, the VA was denying my hospital bills, my truck needed repairs, the cat was dying, and my son wouldn’t talk to me…sounds like a Country/Western song, right?

So maybe God thought I needed a break from all these problems and decided to cure my computer virus (which, BTW, never returned). Maybe He thought I was close to apostasy and loved me enough to intervene with my E-wallet issues: not because the petty earthly trouble I was experiencing was important in the grand scheme of things, because clearly it wasn’t-but simply because I was important to Him. Maybe this was just His way of letting me know He loved me, because I’m too stupid and self-centered to see that He “is everywhere and fillest all things”, even when the going gets tough, so He hit me over the head with an obvious sign. I don’t know, maybe in His cosmic wisdom He thought I’d write about this and maybe, just maybe, one person would listen. So here I am, writing about it. And yes, I hope someone is listening.