Sleeping through pain

My friend, Corey, and I both work at the church and are prayer partners which basically means once a month he and I take a half day to talk about life and pray for one another. Back in October 2007 Corey and his wife Cyndia had their first baby named Ava. As he and I get together to talk about life he has shared with me the joys and challenges of having a new baby in the home. One of the challenges is sleep... or lack thereof.

As you can imagine, Corey and Cyndia want their daughter to sleep well through the night for her good (and for theirs). It is so difficult to hear her crying at night because she can't sleep. Corey said he often prays to God that she would fall back to sleep. Recently, Corey has been reading a book that caused him to think about things in a different light. The book suggested that we often don't consider the full scope of a situation when it comes to our prayers. I'm not suggesting that it's wrong to pray for Ava to get a good night of sleep but we often forget the ways God teaches us.

CS Lewis said that "God whispers to us in our pleasures... but shouts to us in our pain." While we ask God to alleviate the pain perhaps we're also supposed to ask God what He's trying to teach us through the pain. So, while praying for their daughter to have a good night sleep Corey also prays that he would know and learn what God is teaching him. As we wrestle with things like our health, a difficult job, a challenging person person, or an uncomfortable situation it's appropriate for us to ask God what is he trying to say to you.