What Are We Looking For?
Updated: 6 days ago
by Sydney F. Grey
Last night I was a guest at a young friend's wedding. It was held outdoors among giant Ponderosa pines, a blue sky painted with white and silver clouds, and a sparkling reception dinner under a tent. My husband was working, so I made the hour and a half drive and seated myself alone on the back row. To my delight, I was joined by other solitary guests, and the ones nearest me were both Brits!
Naturally I was drawn to them and we struck up some nice conversation before the ceremony. After the couple was pronounced husband and wife, I made my way to my assigned table and was happy when the nice young man from Portsmouth joined me. He was an accomplished story teller and it made what would have been a somewhat lonely situation highly enjoyable.
As it turns out, his mother is an author of a book on the Christian journey. She published it some years ago, before the convenience of print-on-demand was available, and had given up on the book after her first expensive run sold out. Immediately I offered to help her reinstate her book on Amazon in ebook and POD and he was thrilled. He also offered for me and my husband to visit his parents in Wales, and who knows? Perhaps that will happen someday.
Driving home I thought about how we can meet people in passing like this and how easy it is to dismiss these encounters as nothing but chance. But in my experience, especially since I've begun writing the stories God has put on my heart, even ones that take place halfway around the world, that the Lord uses just such connections to his purposes, if we pay attention and lean into them. What might seem trivial at the time might just be his way of offering us the opportunity to embark on adventures we never would have imagined possible.
In our busy, drive-by lives, it is so easy to miss these invitations God gives us. We look for him inside our own bubbles and miss the lesser-traveled paths along the way, the delightful detours that may be shortcuts to him and his plans for us.
As we make the turn into autumn with summer in the rearview mirror, let us be vigilant, looking for God's divine appointments, the beautiful interruptions that, if we are driving towards our own goals with tunnel vision can be completely missed in the blur of life.
I'll take my own advise I think. Instead of allowing the young man from Portsmouth and his mother to fall into a passing memory, I'll keep them on my radar. I'm adding Wales to my bucket list.
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www.sydsartsongs.com
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