After having granddaughter Emerald with me for a week, my appreciation for children has had a fresh infusion of delight. The two of us fell into a happy routine of church day camp every morning and beach time every afternoon.

Between those events, we dug out the old craft bin and generated original artwork. We also refreshed our fairy garden in the front yard and arranged plastic animal families on the back deck.

Whenever Emerald said, “Hey, I’ve got a good idea!” I knew a blessing was about to come my way. Parents frequently have too much to do and are flying fast through their days. But grandparents often have the time to say, “Good idea! Let’s try that.”

One evening while I was tidying up my sewing box, Emerald reached for my old pin cushion and said, “MeeMee, can I use this? ‘Cuz I’ve got a good idea!”

I handed her the tomato-shaped ball full of straight pins. Without saying a word, she carefully removed all the pins and put them in a neat pile. Then, while softly singing a variety of songs, she began sticking the pins back into the tomato in what seemed to be random order.

When she finished, however, she turned the pin cushion toward me and said, “Wasn’t this a good idea?” I had to agree. My pin cushion never looked cuter.

I’ve used that tomato since it belonged to Mom many decades back, and never once did I think of making a face with the pins. Leave it to a child…

Sometimes God impresses us in a similar way — but better. And he seems never to do anything the same way twice. After all, look at his measureless originality in creating mankind. Even identical twins aren’t identical people. And because he never runs out of new ideas, he often works on us or leads us in ways we’ve never seen before… and may struggle to understand.

This might be why we sometimes resist what he’s doing. “It doesn’t make sense,” we say. “It just isn’t logical.” But God’s logic stretches so far beyond ours that even if we lived well into our 100’s and had the wisdom of age, we’d never figure him out.

So, when we ask God to guide us in some way, we can skip suggesting how he might do that. Instead we should leave the how-to up to him, while watching for something completely unexpected to happen. And that will most likely be related to our request…

…because when God says, “Hey, I’ve got a good idea!” it’s always a really good one.

“Call to me and I will answer you. I’ll tell you marvelous and wondrous things that you could never figure out on your own.” (Jeremiah 33:3, The Message)