Welcome to another Grateful Heart Monday! Today’s piece of gratitude is dedicated to, of all things, a license plate I saw on my way home from a friend’s house just over a week ago now, that I felt was a message from my Higher Power and one I really needed to see.
I know it seems rather strange to think a personalized license plate would bring me gratitude. After all, how many of those plates have I seen that either made no sense or were statements I found no energy connection to. But, in this case, I did find connection to it, although at first, I didn’t even know what it meant. Before I say what it actually said though, let me give you a brief backstory to why its message meant so much to me.
In the past few years, I’ve really felt that God has been on radio silence with me more than not. I feel as if all my prayers I put towards others get answered, yet, when it comes to my own struggles I pray over, especially with my health, I hear nothing but crickets. On more days than not, I’m angry at that and have struggled immensely keeping my faith in Something that has been reminding me a lot of my own mother and father, two people who felt more absent than present from my life, especially when I needed them the most.
That being said, I’ve written many times about how easy it is to have faith in God when everything feels like it’s going our way. Remaining faithful in a Supreme Being when one’s life is filled with abundance and relatively stress-free isn’t hard to do. Try having faith though in a God when life is throwing serious curve balls day in and day out, when it’s filled with one trial after another for long periods of time, where life becomes all about nothing but survival, as then it becomes far more challenging to believe something Greater even exists.
So, as I headed home the other night, I was really feeling that way, truly struggling to keep my faith in God. That’s when I noticed the light suddenly turn red a few hundred feet in front of me. I slowed down and came to a stop behind the only other car on the road around me and checked out its license plate in the process. I always have had the tendency to glance at them whenever I’m on the road, simply out of curiosity where people are from. This one was from Ohio, but it was the seven characters on it that ultimately got my attention. They read, “Jon 20 29” and I immediately wondered if it was a Biblical passage. So, as soon as I got home, I looked it up and this is how it read in the Message (MSG) version of it:
Jesus said, “So, you believe because you’ve seen with your own eyes. Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing.”
After reading that, I actually had to chuckle a little, because all too often I find myself looking for God to talk to me in big ways like that all too familiar story of Moses and the burning bush. Yet, I continue to see that sometimes the Universe has a sense of humor by communicating to us in much more subtle ways such as this.
Regardless, what I took away from all this is that my blind faith is still serving a purpose. While I’m quite sure many others might think otherwise, I’m inclined to believe this truly was a small sign from my Higher Power. Because in the end, it really made me grateful by giving me hope that God sees my blind faith and is letting me know it’s going to lead to much greater blessings in the end, which is why I’m dedicating today’s Grateful Heart Monday to a license plate that simply read, “Jon 20 29”.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
