God's Little Reminders

So, the other night I was getting ready for bed and doing one last sweep through the house - turning off lights and making sure the doors were locked. I was tired and anxious to get to bed. When I got to the door in the laundry room that leads out to the garage, I checked that it was locked and turned to walk up the stairs. But something stopped me. I had this feeling that I needed to open the door and make sure that our garage door was shut.

I almost ignored the feeling and walked up the stairs anyway. After all, we rarely open our garage door and there shouldn't have been any reason for the door to be open. But the feeling persisted so I shrugged and opened the door, fully expecting to find the garage door closed as it almost always was. I was so sure that the garage door was closed, in fact, that I only cracked the door open an inch or two - just enough for me to peek out and see the closed garage door. To my surprise, though, when I looked through the crack in the door I could see straight through the garage and out to my neighbor's porch light across the street. Dumbfounded, I swung the door completely open to see that our garage door was actually open. I pressed the button to close the garage, re-locked the door leading in to the house, and walked up the stairs to go to bed.

This experience was so small and uneventful, but it has had a great impact on me. I have thought about it several times since then and it always brings a smile to my face. I believe that it is no coincidence that on the only night that we forgot to close the garage door, I had a burning feeling within me that I needed to check that it was closed. Checking the garage door was not, at least until that night, a part of my regular nightly routine.

I know that God, through His Holy Spirit, whispered to me to check the garage door that night. I don't know what would have happened had I ignored the feeling and left the garage door open all night - perhaps many of our things would have been stolen or perhaps someone would have found the open garage door as an open invitation to break in to our home during the night. Leaving the garage door open could have had catastrophic results...or, nothing would have happened at all. It really doesn't matter. What does matter to me is that God loves me, little insignificant me, enough to remind me to close the garage door.

On a night, just like any other night, God spoke to me in His simple but miraculous way.