Of Lost shoes and Bull-Thistle.

It amazes me at how God can use something we despise to guide us to what we are asking for. Let me share this   little story.
  Thursday, as Ben was having a good time playing hard with Levi, he threw one of his front shoes, a-typical for the poor guy. Now, this doesn't sound like much until you think about trying to FIND a mud-covered horse shoe in a pasture that's about 1-1/12 acre, AND you only have about a half-hour before you have to come in for a piano lesson, after which it will be too dark to find anything! Not a very nice outlook of finding a shoe that night.
  So, thinking that I actually knew where he lost it, I headed out confidently and started searching that spot. It wasn't there..... So, I searched a larger spot; still no shoe. At this point I knew I needed to head in and figured I better call the farrier to come out so I could get a new shoe. I figured if I left it out overnight it would get buried in the mud and I would never find. It's happened before!
  As I started to come back up to the barn, I prayed. I just wanted to find the shoe. As I continued toward the barn I glanced back behind me. I stopped. There in the grass under the opposite fence line (My pasture is long and narrow) I saw something silverish-gray and somewhat horseshoed shaped. "Thank You Lord," I prayed! I half-ran over to it and started slowing down. My "lost-shoe" was a bull-thistle.-- Stupid thing anyway! Why on earth did God make a bull-thistle? What purpose is in it? -- Thoughts like that were going through my brain as I turned around. And then I looked with amazement. There in the grass about two feet from the hated bull-thistle was my horse shoe, half buried in the mud in a way that it would have taken me hours to find it if it hadn't gotten buried before hand.
   If it hadn't been for that bull-thistle that I thought was my horse shoe, I might have never found my shoe, let alone found it so quickly. It reminded me of the fact that sometimes God uses trials and "bull-thistles" in our lives to help us find what we are praying for. So, next time you see a bull-thistle, thank God for them. Maybe they will help you find your "sought-after" someday!!

~Becca and Boys~