The Door of Hope

“Our misery will end with this job,”
Agnes said to herself.
Life with her mother on a shoestring budget
had gone on for far too long.

Her dream was university 
a white-collar job, a decent life.
But dreams cost money,
and money was nowhere to be found.

When the lady at the office said
she had spoken to the boss regarding the job,
hope flickered again 
A chance for a better life, she thought to herself.

Her mum, busy as usual in the kitchen, called out,
“Did you pray for His will to be done?”
“Not now, Mum,” Agnes sighed.
“Why bring God into everything?”

Still, that night she whispered,
“Lord, if this isn’t meant for me,
please let me not get the job.”

The next morning she reached the office,
her heart steady with excitement 
only to hear,
“The vacancy’s been filled.
A board member’s nephew was chosen.
We couldn’t refuse. We’re sorry.”

Shell-shocked, she walked home.
“The door was slammed in my face,” she cried.
“I was supposed to collect the offer letter 
all the formalities were done, all of them!”

Her mum spoke softly,
“Remember, you prayed for His will.”
Agnes turned away,
too hurt to answer,
and too tired to believe.

That night, her journal caught her tears 
anger, confusion, pain.
“Instead of a job,” she wrote,
“I got shooed off from that place.
But His promises never fail 
that means something better is waiting for me.
I just have to wait.”

Days passed, heavy and slow.
Each morning she woke with the same ache,
rejected for no rhyme or reason.
“This is what you call fate,” she sighed.

Then one morning, loud knocking.
Her mum stood smiling, eyes shining.
“Agnes, you got the scholarship!
Isn’t it a miracle?”

Agnes froze. “That can’t be true 
I wasn’t even close to their selection criteria.”
Her mum laughed through tears.
“It is true. The semester starts tomorrow.
Start packing, my child  you have to go.”

Agnes looked at her mum,
her heart full at last.
“So this was His will?” she asked softly.

Her mum smiled, her face warm with joy.
“A thousand times better than ours,” she said.
“His way is not our way,
His thoughts are not our thoughts.”

Isaiah 55:8 KJV

8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord.

Hosea 2:15 KJV

15 And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.