I open my computer on an impossible day, and without fail there is an email from Sara. How did she know? I wonder. But really it is not surprising. Sara hears from God. Her spirit is so tuned in to His heart that I am never surprised when the prayers she prays over me via email match up exactly with what I am feeling and thinking and learning, even without my having breathed a word of it to her.
Isn’t it amazing how God loves us? It is rare that such a cherished friendship could be forged across an ocean after only very brief interactions. I am amazed that God cares about me so much that He would take the intimate, sacred pleas and whispers of my heart and impart them to someone so far away. And I am amazed at Sara’s continued faithfulness to pray for and over me, my heart, and my family. God uses this woman to speak to me, and it is my prayer that as you read her words, her heart laid bare here on these pages, He will speak to you too.
Sara understands deeply something that I am still slowly learning, reaching to grasp. She knows what it is to hope when it doesn’t make sense, to seek God with our hearts when our flesh wants to run. She knows what it is to seek Him out of obedience, to trust Him and even hope in Him as a sacrifice of praise. Sara knows who God is in the long dark nights, and that He is that same God on the warm spring mornings that burst with new life.
Sara knows communion with the Father. She calls it adoration, and I know that it moves His heart. Sara has learned that God is much more concerned with who we are becoming than with what we are doing, and she shares it all here as she cries over carrot peelings and rejoices in the miracle of a tiny bit of growth in her child’s heart.
I have been learning this lesson for years and I learn it anew in these pages: Our God, he can make baskets of bread out of the tiny loaves we hand Him. He can make a life of glory out of our weak-kneed, timid yes to Him. As C. S. Lewis said, “To love is to be vulnerable” — open to love and then, too, open to disappointment. Too often we try to avoid that scary place where we love so deep, so much, our hearts could break. But without the bitterness, we would never appreciate the sweetness.
It is my great privilege to introduce you to my friend Sara. This is a book for those hearts who long to see Him in the mess. It is Sara’s personal story, written with eloquence and grace, about a God who rescued her from barrenness and carried her to a land of abundance, dripping with milk and honey and all things His goodness. She teaches me again what I have already known; she teaches me to hope anew. He is the candle in the darkness, the light that radiates glory and sprinkles new mercies every morning. My prayer is that as you read these words, you will be drawn to a hope, to the Father, whose extravagant love never ceases to amaze.
— Katie Davis