I’ll give you the moral to this story right up front.

God multiplies what you ask for in faithfulness.

I have been blessed with a garden where I can sit for hours, work for days and that spending time there comes back to me a hundredfold.

We have birds of all kinds that visit us year round. Feeding them is expensive but God always finds a way to provide us with the funds to do so.

We have rabbits and squirrels who are fed by the same seed that birds toss from the feeders. We have fish that have been with us for many years in the small pond just outside our door.

And we have deer.

There was a time before we created the garden that we loved looking outside and seeing all of these creatures great and small. As the garden grew we needed to do all we could to protect it.

Over the years my wife has come to call the backyard “the compound.” To one side I needed to build fences tall enough to stop the deer from jumping into the yard and fences tight enough to keep the rabbit at bay.

The rabbits still get in.

The deer stay out, but we still have the pleasure of seeing them.

I am not a hunter, so every season my heart beats a little faster as I worry about the deer that pass by our yard and down the driveway. I count them before and after the official season arrives.

This year it appeared that only one returned. But we had one.

Weeks passed and it was nowhere to be seen.

I couldn’t imagine what it would be like here without them.

So, I asked God, “Tell me there is at least one.”

Nothing. Days went by and there was no sign of the scrawny doe I came to call my own.

Then today I just happened to look out my office window and there it was.

“Thanks, God!” I said out loud.

Then there was another and another and another and…10 deer!

We have never had more than three. Now there are ten.

Oh, I know they will split up and travel different ways throughout the area, but I only asked for one and God not only gave me ten, but He made certain I was there to see them.

I was like a child. “One, wait another! What? Another?”

They all appeared one at a time like pulling rabbits out of a hat.

Maybe where you live your see dozens. Maybe you don’t see them at all.

Maybe it really doesn’t mean a thing to you. Maybe you see them as your next meal.

I see the little things as big.

I see the asking for one being multiplied ten times over.

I see that moment as God’s way of affirming He listens.

I see that if He will do that for me, imagine what He and I will do together for you.

“I’ll see you in my prayers!”

Bob Perks bobperks@comcast.net