God and the grocery

In apartment building, a pious Christian lady used to live next door to an atheist. She was in the habit waking up early morning and praying; on top of it, she spent her entire day praising God in loud voice. The atheist soon got fed up with her and tried every word in his vocabulary to make her shut up, but nothing worked. 

One day, this woman ran out of all the groceries and she still had a few more days to go before getting paid. So she made a list of groceries she would need and began praying to God reading out the list. She continued to thank God for all his love and caring and asked God to help her overcome her current situation. 

This went on all day and the atheist next door finally lost all his patience listening to this lady begging to God for her groceries. He knew that the groceries would never come; it just don't work like that, he was certain. Then he decided to play a practical joke on this woman, so he copied down the list of groceries, went to grocery store and bought everything on the list. 

Upon return, he put all the grocery in front of her door, rang the bell and hid. The lady opened the door and saw all the bags of groceries. She immediately realized that the groceries matched with exactly what she had been asking all day for. She looked around and saw no one. Thinking that it was an act of God, she began praising God. 

The atheist let it go on for a while thoroughly enjoying the show, then he came out of his hiding place and began laughing at the woman. He told her that it was him who bought the groceries and showed her the receipt as proof. He told the lady to quit praying and praising because there is no god.

Upon hearing this, the woman began praising God even louder.She even began singing a hymn about the mighty power of God, the One to Whom everything is possible.

Completely baffled by her reaction, the atheist wanted some answers from the woman, and she said, "Not only did God give me the grocery I needed, but also got the devil to pay for it".

It is absolutely necessary to have a positive attitude to have a prayer answered. We all have certain ideas about how our prayers would be answered.  Often times, our prayers are answered in ways which are totally beyond our imagination or expectation. By remaining grateful to God and enabling ourselves to see goodness regardless of the situation that we are in, we can help ourselves to feel the presence of God's loving hands working in our lives. When we open our hearts and minds to feel that presence, we will realize that all we have said and done, all the time spent in reading the Scriptures and engaged in what felt like hopeless, irresponsible prayers have been of help after all. It is not the one thing we have done, but it is everything we have done. At the moment when we realize that a prayer has been answered, all the afflictions we face, all the obstacles we amassed, all the doubts we accumulated will simply vanish. It is a time to be filled with the absolute certainty that God's been there all along enjoying with us in our happiness, grieving with us in our pains, suffering in our sins and celebrating when we turn around to receive His grace.