The Day the Sun Stood Still

BY Kaitie Stoddard

I think Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus was modeled after my third grade teacher. One of the coolest things about my Ms. Frizzle was that she took adult ballet classes. Once a week, I’d see her at the dance studio as my class let out and she was warming up for hers. Our mutual love of dance forged a special bond between us. In and out of the classroom, I felt like she was rooting for me. I was confident she was on my side and wanted to see me succeed.

That confidence in our relationship gave me the gumption to ask her if I could set up a “sewing station” in her classroom. I was shocked when she obliged my request. Barely able to stitch two pieces of fabric together, I’d taken to making blankets for my classmates. Any downtime I had throughout the school day, I would race back to my needle and thread to whip up a new creation. This was not a creative arts school, mind you, but a public school where my teacher was bending all the rules for me. 

I learned that when someone is in your corner, you should make bold requests. They might say “no,” perhaps for your own good. Then again, they might just say “yes.” And they certainly wouldn’t ridicule you for asking. If anything, the confidence I felt to express my creativity in the classroom probably made my teacher feel even closer to me. When we feel secure in a relationship, we have more confidence to ask for what we really want. The same is true with God.

In Joshua 10, we see a man who was truly confident in his relationship with the Lord. As five neighboring kings launched an attack on Joshua’s people, he didn’t waver one bit from God’s plan for Israel. The Lord told Joshua, “Do not be afraid of them, for I have handed them over to you” (Joshua 10:8). God promised to back Joshua’s army, and Joshua trusted the Lord to follow through on His promise. Joshua’s strong faith in God gave him the boldness to ask for the impossible: to stop the sun in the sky long enough to finish the battle. And “the LORD listened to a man, because the LORD fought for Israel” (v.14). 

Are we afraid to ask God for the impossible? If God has commissioned us to do a work, we need to trust that He will see His plan through. We can ask our Father for miracles, believing that however He answers our prayers, He does so with love. We may not always get the result we’d hoped for, but that doesn’t mean we should stop asking. God tells us to “approach the throne of grace with boldness,” confident in our relationship with Jesus (Hebrews 4:16). We serve a God with the power to move mountains, stop the sun from setting, and give us eternal life. Why shouldn’t we ask?