God is not a genie.

Though we often treat Him like a genie.

We ask God to grant wishes.

We expect God to grant wishes.

And not just three wishes, like the old stories about genies, where a person cannot wish for an unlimited supply of wishes. No, we ask God for a lifetime of wishes.

We ask for all wishes great and small and for many things in between.

Some of the wishes are altruistic.

We pray that God will heal sick friends and strangers. We pray that God will bring about world peace. We pray for people who have been devastated by calamities, deaths, disasters, to be delivered, helped and saved.

We ask God to grant these things. We ask they be granted like wishes.

In some ways, we take advantage of God. We ask for things that we would never ask from a genie. Because the genie would only grant three wishes and we expect more from God.

We pray for trivial things like asking God to hold off on the rain because we have a fun day planned or to let our favorite team win a game or letting us pass a test in school.

And we ask God to grant the expected wishes – the big wishes – success at work, to be attractive and appealing, to be talented, to be rich and powerful.

Sometimes, when we pray, we aren’t so much bringing our hands together in supplication as we are rubbing an invisible lamp in the hope our wishes will be granted.

But God is not a genie.

Though He does grant wishes.

Though sometimes we don’t see them, or realize them.

Like the old story of the man trapped on the roof of his house during a flood. He prayed to God for deliverance, to rescue him. A man in a boat showed up but the man refused to get in the boat, saying he had faith that God would save him. Same with the second boat and the third. The waters overtook the roof and the man drowned. In heaven, the man asked God, why didn’t you save me? God responded, I sent you three boats.

We sometime fail to see when God grants our wishes, both big and small. They don’t always come when or how we expect them, so sometimes we think the answer is no.

And, sometimes, the answer is no.

Still, even when our prayers are answered, our wishes granted, our blessings are many, we pray for more. We wish for more. We ask God to grant more wishes.

We forget God is not a genie.

We forget to be thankful for what we have already been given. The wishes already granted. We forget to be thankful and full of praise.

We wish for more and more, while seeing less and less, and sometimes when we fail to see the wish that has been granted, or the answer is no, we become angry, hurt and bitter.

We push God away. We squeeze God into a small lamp within our souls and we toss Him from us. We remove Him from our lives.

Though really when we give into bitterness and grievance, we are the ones trapped in a lamp … not God.

Still, when we have a need again, when we again place our hands together and make a wish, God is there.

Though He may not grant our wishes, God will listen to our prayers, over and over again.

For God is not a genie.

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times and editor of The Tifton Gazette.