Enlarging my borders…

The next step always used to be a great concern for me. It was about two years ago and I was sitting alone in my fortress of solitude long into the wee hours of the morning. Much as was the norm back then, staying up till three, four sometimes past the hours when most people would be arriving to work. I had a job I was ready to leave, an abode though no home and many past great deeds yet no up to date occurrences of which I was extremely proud. Life was at a stand still and I had no idea where I wanted to take it from there: you could say my stagnant pond that was getting smaller with each breath.

Another midnight had come and gone and the nightlights in the sky were already fading into a glorious yet all too bright breaking dawn. The sequence of nocturnal events that occurred that night had been a blur of movies, computerized carnage, random musings and strange forum discussions with a kaleidoscopic of motley misfits. I had to work in a few hours and sleep was merely a nostalgic feeling to see an old friend last since past.

So, stumbling from my computer chair, I went to the kitchen to get some kind of substance and then went to bed. I knew I was past tired and wouldn’t even attempt to sleep so I turned on another movie and lost interest all too soon and so added some music to the mix.

“I really should sleep,” I mumbled to myself wondering why I needed so much noise, leading to other thoughts. Thoughts not all to important nor is the fact that i was talking to myself as I often do when alone and trying to separate, form and coordinate the chaos I consider to be coherent thought. It was several minutes into this internal dialogue when i spied with my little eye a little black book I hadn’t rifled through in quite a while. It certainly contained numbers, but only as a point of reference or well the name of one of its books.

Two of my favorite books in the Bible are Samuel and Kings, well I suppose you could say four, although I already read those countless times and decided to read through Chronicles. And at keys points in my life this always seems to happen, I read through a passage I know I’ve read through a thousand times before and find myself surprised to find something I swear I’d never seen before and at the same time swear I have. Once it was Zephaniah 3:17, but this day it was 2 Chronicles 4:9-10: “Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez,[a] saying, ‘Because I bore him in pain.’ And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, ‘Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!’ So God granted him what he requested.”

I’m not going to go into some “name it and claim it” spiel and if that’s what you take away from those verses, you’re missing the point entirely. And without getting into the theological ramifications that hit me like Jack’s Mack Truck, I realized a simple truth I had already known but never really put into practice. God indeed wants to bless us and He wants us to ask for His blessings in our lives, really, sometimes I think He’s waiting for us to ask. It’s such an astonishing, simple truth hidden in such a boring chapter of scripture.

Jabez is a man I could relate to, especially at that time in my life. now, I’m glad my mom who had reason to name me Jabez with the two hour contraction she had when I was born decided not to go that route and named me Daniel instead (a tremendously wonderful name, i highly recommend it), but seriously, I think this is a man who was simply looking for the next step in his life. He wanted something more, he wanted God’s blessings and he asked God to bless him. You can see from what is said of him prior to his request and with how he made the request that it was not a request made out of greed and scripture never goes further to tell us how God enlarge this man’s borders, just that God granted Jabez’s request.

At that moment, I didn’t get down on my knees and no halo of light surrounded me, however I did ask God to bless me and enlarge my borders. I had no idea how he would grant my request nor even if He would, still I prayed with faith and hoped with the substance of my belief that He would find me worthy of such blessings. Of course i’d like to say that I was ever fervent in my prayers, making supplications known to God day and night for myself and my friends and family. To some point, I suppose I was, I did from time to time remember and in some midnight, early morning random chats with God I would add this request.

Since then, and again not for any saintly determination on my part, He has answered my prayers in some amazing ways. I started working for a library not that long after that night. It’s a job I love going to, so I am thankful for that. Three months later I met my wife and 8 months later married her (of course). We never thought we’d be able to buy a home any time soon since at the time I married Aly my credit was in the low 600’s, however in the last year we acquired a wonderful dog (at least i think he’s wonderful, my wife doesn’t always agree when he has an accident), a new house and had a beautiful baby boy the day we closed escrow. Now I have three amazing boys. I did have to buy a new car after totaling our matrix not too long ago, but it all worked out. I find, life is full of unexpected blessings. God has definitely enlarged my borders in ways, merely two years ago, I’m not sure I could have imagined. I am extremely excited when I consider what He has in store for us next.