The Miracle of the Ice-Cream Churn.

By R.M. Hamilton

I can’t eat dairy products. I haven’t eaten ice cream for years. This really doesn’t bother me, but quite suddenly, one evening it did. There was an add for a particularly delicious New Zealand brand of ice cream on the Telly and I was consumed with the desire for a bowl of ice cream.

Aware I’d have to make it myself, I said, inside my head, “God, I’d really appreciate an ice cream maker.”

I didn’t tell anyone else about this prayer and I promptly forgot it.

But the very next day, Mum and Dad went pottering off to their favourite thrift store in town, the Salvation Army.

I stayed home.

And when they returned, Mum barrelled in the front door looking mildly disgusted. “You’ll never guess what your father has brought,” she said crossly. “I told him to leave it there because it will be a two-minute wonder, and it’ll never get used. But he absolutely insisted we had to have it. He’s brought an ice cream maker!”

I looked at her blankly. “Is that a joke?”

“It certainly isn’t!” said Mum, annoyed. “I told him we didn’t want it cluttering up the cupboard, but he wouldn’t listen, and he jolly well brought the stupid thing!”

“Mum, I told God last night I wanted an ice cream maker.”

“WHAT?”

“Yeah, on the couch when we were watching the news. I said, ‘God, I’d really appreciate an ice cream maker’. Just yesterday!”

“Oh really?” said Mum, brightening. She swung around and stuck her head out the door and yelled down to where Dad was retrieving the ice cream maker from the back of his Ute. “Ian! Ruth prayed for an ice cream maker yesterday! No wonder you insisted we got it! That was very spot on of you!”

She turned back to me with a sheepish look. “He was more on to it than me.”

The ice cream maker is not cluttering up the cupboard. We haven’t moved it from the kitchen bench. It works great, and I have a feeling it won’t be cluttering up any cupboard anytime soon.

Not with the hot Australian summer riding in.

The Bible tells us to pray about everything.

And it really does mean everything.

It’s important to pray for wars to end.

It’s important to pray for hostages to be released.

It’s important to pray that terrorists will be stopped.

It’s important to pray for children trapped in war zones.

But it’s also important to pray for ice cream makers.

Because faith is the fuel that powers the vehicle of prayer.

When we pray about the big, important issues of the times we live in, sometimes God answers very slowly.

That’s because the big issues are complex.

We don’t understand how many moving parts there are to getting big, important international prayers answered.

We don’t know about all the different factors God has to balance in his answer.

But getting something like an ice cream maker is simple.

There’s a high chance we’ll get that a lot quicker (although the very next day is extraordinarily fast, even for a little prayer!)

And that’s why we must pray about everything.

Because faith is a muscle. And if we only call on the power of prayer when the situation is dire, we tend to spend too much time wondering if God is even listening.

It’s like running a marathon.

If we only show up for the marathon, we probably won’t go the distance.

It’s all the secret, unseen training that enables endurance.

Often, smaller prayers get faster answers.

Those little answers all stack up into a certainty that we have a God who hears.

And it’s the answers to the little prayers for ice cream makers, that grows in us the faith to pray for the big stuff like world peace.