Answers at My Fingertips

One of the things I do as a special education teacher is to read tests aloud to my students, so they can be tested on their knowledge of a subject instead of their reading ability.  Just the other day I was reading a math test to a sweet little third-grade girl.  Many of my students are allowed other accommodations, such as using a calculator to solve problems. She was one of the students who was permitted to do this.

Throughout the test, she was trying her best on each problem.  Many only required her to do things like identify the names of various shapes or match vocabulary words to the corresponding pictures.  However, others did require actual calculations.  She dutifully copied one difficult problem on a dry erase board and began working on it, but she was having trouble solving it.  The calculator lay only inches away from her on the table, but due to the rules of the test, I could not remind her it was there. For several minutes, she struggled with the calculation, erased, and wrote it again, and tried to talk herself through the steps. She even reached over the calculator once to pick up a number line to assist her.  Finally, as I held my tongue (and my breath!), she noticed the calculator, looked at me wide-eyed with a big smile and picked it up to complete the problem successfully.

Sometimes I am a lot like this third grader.  I take a problem in my life and try to work it out myself.  I struggle with the complexities of it, backtrack and try to do it another way, and then I get frustrated.  All along, the means to solve my problem is just at my fingertips.  Why do we sometimes look at prayer as a last resort instead of the first impulse?

I’m not suggesting prayer always gives us the instant solutions a calculator does, but I do know God’s answers to life’s problems are always better than ours, even if we don’t always understand them.  I’m learning the first thing I should do is to take a situation to Him and then step out in faith with the wisdom He gives me – to take actions based on what He has promised.  I imagine when I’m struggling with something on my own, God is patiently waiting for me to notice and remember what is available to me right at that moment and to use the tool of prayer to begin to put things right.