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In life, things don’t always turn out the way we want them to. We may ask for red and get blue. We may pray for A . . . and get B. We may wish for miracles at our fingertips and find ourselves twiddling our thumbs. It is in these moments of the unanswered that many of us simply give up on God.

If you are going through your own moments of the unanswered, rest assured that the tribulations of unanswered prayers are not a new phenomenon. They go back to the days of Abraham and they fast-forward to the age of a young Thomas Edison.

Thomas Edison was a child of difference. His teachers thought he was mentally disabled and his erratic behavior made it difficult for him to make any friends. I imagine the young Tom must have prayed so many times for friends. He probably even spent nights crying in his bed or inside himself as he watched other children laugh and play. Maybe he had times when he asked . . . “God aren’t you there?” And, perhaps the silence of his lonely childhood left him in constant speculation.

If God couldn’t discover any friends for Tom . . . like many other children, he would just invent them. In this, from a world of imaginary friends, came a newfound love of creation, for dreaming up things from thin air. Tom dreamed and dreamed and dreamed until finally he imagined up some of the things that helped shape our modern world – electricity, the phonograph and even motion pictures.

While his prayer for the love of other children may have gone unseen at the time, it did not go unnoticed. As Tom aged, his inventions went on to make him a hero among children . . . millions of them to be exact. He inspired them to dream, to create, to never tear down their walls of faith and to just be content to trust that somewhere along that wall the Lord was busy scribbling “God Was Here.”

God has a funny way of being in the middle of it all right when you think He’s flown the coop. He has a way of considering our suggestions and then, dreaming up something one million times bigger.

He tells us right inside our handbook:

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29:11)

“But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” (1 Corinthians 2:9)

So, when you shoot for the stars and miss - simply keep moving, keep going, keep dreaming . . . You might just find those aimless stars were pushed aside for your safe landing on the moon.

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Brooke Keith is the author of many books for children and a long time writer for many well-loved ministries around the world. She is a wife of one very amazing man and a mom to their five equally amazing kids. But most of all, Brooke is a girl head over heels for her Savior and finds His love far too wonderful to keep to herself. When Brooke is not busy searching for her toddlers missing shoe you can find her on her blog.