By Jodi Rae Ingstad 

I’ve adopted a new word that seems more powerful than positive thinking. The word I refer to is “favor.”
I use the word when I talk to God. I pray it upon that husband of mine and our families. I pray it upon people who I know could use some and then I sit back and wait for the blessing. If you’re ever on the fence as to whether God exists or works wonders then allow me to testify!
God, you may have heard, does big things and HE does them mightily. I was full of thanks and praise after my brother Bill visited me at work last week after not seeing him in six years. I figured that was a whole dump load of favor and felt unworthy to receive it.
After that visit I was a walking mouth of teeth. My smile couldn’t be wiped off. Two days later we received visitors from Washington. My youngest brother Erik, his wife, Allison, and their four children all under the age of 10 showed up.
I knew they were coming and spent some time preparing for their arrival. We had booked a week at a resort in Minnesota. Suddenly, Allison was laid off from her position at a large Washington church. They didn’t feel they wanted to spend any extra money and the trip almost got called off.
I had a great deal of anxiety prior to their visit. There was no room for them at the inn. Our cabin is too small to accommodate that many people. I used my new and powerful word to pray favor upon the situation. A funny thing happened just then.
A dear friend of ours had a fifth-wheel camper she didn’t want anymore. She offered to let us use it and we jumped at the chance. I quickly phoned my brother and wife to let them know we had solved the problem of not having anywhere for them to stay. Husband readied the large camper for their arrival. The camper is rather new and it was beyond my expectations for the kind of favor I was expecting. That’s the funny thing about God. I don’t play poker but if I was a betting girl, I’d think God was trying to get me to fold. He takes what we pray for and raises it by a thousand if we only believe.
Favor shows itself in many ways - some simple and some extremely complex. My brother’s children are at the ages of great curiosity. I didn’t pray for that. I only prayed that the kids would all have such a good time with us that they’d never forget their experience. Their first night here was rainy but the children frolicked on our meadow hill despite the wetness. Within the first few minutes of their arrival I was explaining to all of them what a wood tick was as I picked one off of my nephew. Another day of tick-pick’n transpired before I got smart.
I took a water bottle with a cap and filled it partially with water. I removed the label and explained to all of the kids that this would be our tick bottle. The kids played outside with all of the little things we set up for them to do. However, the thing they looked the most forward to was picking the ticks off each other and putting them in the bottle.
They are all gone now, my family - not the ticks. The tick bottle sits on the table full of drown  bugs. I prayed favor upon the time the kids spent with me, and now I’m excited to get elderly.  When I am old, gray and weak I’ll be strong in laughter as my niece and nephews remember me as “The weird aunt who kept a bottle of wood ticks.”
Give thanks for wood ticks. Memories are God’s way of injecting permanent favor upon us all.