In the fall we took a vacation, our first in three years. We rented a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina and proceeded to have one adventure after another—none of which we had planned on, and none of which anyone would have planned on.
We got lost four times, despite following written down directions as carefully as possible. We locked ourselves out of the cabin—a very remote cabin, nowhere near the rental office. We had to have our ailing twenty-two year old truck towed twenty miles to a mechanic in the middle of Tourist Town, then take a taxi drive that same twenty miles to pick it up two days later. Then a tropical storm blew over us the morning before we were to leave. Floridians, mind you, hit by the remnants of a hurricane in North Carolina! We never did do any of the things we had actually planned on doing. But, oh, it could have been so much worse.
I guess I was an adult before I realized that prayers did not have to wait for some formal occasion. Just like an earthly father, our Heavenly Father is willing to listen whenever we call. Believe me, we called that week again and again. Another thing I have learned is that God will bless people who are not necessarily His children simply because of their connection to His children, Potiphar, for example (Gen 39:5). And so that week I found myself again and again thanking God for the good people He sent our way and asking Him to send them blessings.
Good folks like these:
The two or three people who took the time to send complete strangers on their way in the right direction.
The kind woman on the phone at the rental office who helped us find the hidden lock box with the extra key to the cabin in it, gave us the code to that box, and would not hang up until she was sure we had gotten back in.
The fellow tourist at the neighboring cabin who offered to look at our truck and when he couldn't fix it, looked up a mechanic with the highest ratings and called him for us, giving him details he needed because Keith,, being deaf, cannot function on a cell phone.
A tow truck driver, a mechanic, and a taxi driver who were not only friendly, but refused to price-gouge a couple of desperate tourists, who were honest and fair in their business dealings instead.
Again and again we asked our Father to shower these people with blessings as He had done for us by sending them our way. The greatest blessing for us was seeing, in the middle of a tumultuous year, when it's so easy to believe our nation is going down the tubes in a headlong plunge, that there are still good people out there, people who will help strangers, who will do the right thing when the wrong thing would have been so easy and much more profitable.
Look around as you go about your daily life. Find the good people. Thank God and ask Him to bless them as well. Don't be selfish with the grace He gives, but as a child mimicking his father, spread it around as He does every day, giving the sun and the rain to all. And who knows? Maybe you will have somehow, some day, made it possible to share with them the greatest gift of Grace there is.
I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men…That your way may be known upon earth, your salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you. (1Tim 2:1; Ps 67:1-3).
Dene Ward
We got lost four times, despite following written down directions as carefully as possible. We locked ourselves out of the cabin—a very remote cabin, nowhere near the rental office. We had to have our ailing twenty-two year old truck towed twenty miles to a mechanic in the middle of Tourist Town, then take a taxi drive that same twenty miles to pick it up two days later. Then a tropical storm blew over us the morning before we were to leave. Floridians, mind you, hit by the remnants of a hurricane in North Carolina! We never did do any of the things we had actually planned on doing. But, oh, it could have been so much worse.
I guess I was an adult before I realized that prayers did not have to wait for some formal occasion. Just like an earthly father, our Heavenly Father is willing to listen whenever we call. Believe me, we called that week again and again. Another thing I have learned is that God will bless people who are not necessarily His children simply because of their connection to His children, Potiphar, for example (Gen 39:5). And so that week I found myself again and again thanking God for the good people He sent our way and asking Him to send them blessings.
Good folks like these:
The two or three people who took the time to send complete strangers on their way in the right direction.
The kind woman on the phone at the rental office who helped us find the hidden lock box with the extra key to the cabin in it, gave us the code to that box, and would not hang up until she was sure we had gotten back in.
The fellow tourist at the neighboring cabin who offered to look at our truck and when he couldn't fix it, looked up a mechanic with the highest ratings and called him for us, giving him details he needed because Keith,, being deaf, cannot function on a cell phone.
A tow truck driver, a mechanic, and a taxi driver who were not only friendly, but refused to price-gouge a couple of desperate tourists, who were honest and fair in their business dealings instead.
Again and again we asked our Father to shower these people with blessings as He had done for us by sending them our way. The greatest blessing for us was seeing, in the middle of a tumultuous year, when it's so easy to believe our nation is going down the tubes in a headlong plunge, that there are still good people out there, people who will help strangers, who will do the right thing when the wrong thing would have been so easy and much more profitable.
Look around as you go about your daily life. Find the good people. Thank God and ask Him to bless them as well. Don't be selfish with the grace He gives, but as a child mimicking his father, spread it around as He does every day, giving the sun and the rain to all. And who knows? Maybe you will have somehow, some day, made it possible to share with them the greatest gift of Grace there is.
I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men…That your way may be known upon earth, your salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you. (1Tim 2:1; Ps 67:1-3).
Dene Ward
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