Archive for August, 2009

God Puts People in My Path for a Reason

Monday, August 31st, 2009

I recently met a young man named Adrian Garrett who has a college degree and has taught special education and is now teaching at a technology. He directs a gospel choir, teaches Sunday school and occasionally preaches. All of these are incredible accomplishments considering the fact that this young black man began life in an institute for the profoundly mentally and physically handicapped because of an array of birth defects that rendered his legs into abbreviated stumps. Today as an adult he stands 3’ 4’’ tall.

Adrian tells me that the doctors don’t really have a name for the conglomeration of 13 problems he was born with – a fairly normally proportioned torso, arms, head and neck and then his unusual legs, missing major bones and working parts. He only has one kidney and was born with a cleft palate that made it hard for him to feed as an infant and later hard to speak when he was a toddler. And so Adrian existed for 2 years in a steel crib in a room with other children with profound physical and mental handicaps in a world of extremely limited possibilities.

Then God started putting people in Adrian’s path. It began with a substitute teacher named Anne Stanhope who realized that Adrian was a bright child when he did a puzzle. Later, encouraged by his progress, Adrian’s mother took him home to lead a more normal life. After that God sent a procession of people put into Adrian’s path – teachers, doctors, Sunday school teachers, relatives, choir directors, college professors, the school superintendent who took a chance on hiring Adrian for his first teaching job.

That afternoon when I met Adrian things had come back full circle to the original person in Adrian’s path, Anne Stanhope, who invited me over to meet Adrian when he was visiting from New Jersey for a few short hours in our area of Georgia. I carved out a short time in my busy schedule to sit on Anne’s screened back porch. I asked Adrian, “What do you tell people about your life?”

Without a moment’s hesitation he replied, “God has been good. He has put people in my path for a reason. I have been blessed.”

As I drove home, I realized that God had introduced Adrian into my overscheduled path that day for a very good reason. I’m in charge of two very big projects that are way too big for me to handle. Unfortunately, I have a tendency to let a valuable resource in God’s kingdom go to waste: the people in my path. That’s because I’m something of a loner. I hate to ask people to help me do things. It’s easier to do it myself, even if it wears me out and leaves me with a “poor me” attitude. Adrian opened my eyes to the possibility that the “people in my path” might be there for a reason. God might have even placed them there. Me, accept help? With a little wisdom from an incredible young man named Adrian, I’m going to try.

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Unseen Witness to a Marriage

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

On Saturday night I was again an unseen witness to a marriage. Surprisingly, I’ve witnessed a number of weddings to which I haven’t been invited. No, I’m not a professional wedding crasher. It’s just that the beach at Hilton Head SC where we have a vacation home is a favorite spot for beachside weddings. There’s nothing more delightful than taking an evening stroll on the beach and happening upon a wedding. The great majority of beach weddings I’ve witnessed are intimate well orchestrated affairs that don’t skimp on any of the traditional details. Bridesmaids with high heels sinking in the sand walking down an impromptu aisle between white folding chairs, a minister in a robe standing with his back against the Atlantic Ocean, a groom in a black tuxedo with a white rose boutaineer, a bride in a long white flowing gowns trailing along in the sand trying to keep the veil on her head in the wind, and the freshness and unpredictability all around of surf and sun and clouds and God’s holy cathedral of the great dome of sky over the shore.

On Saturday night I was at a different beach – Tybee Island, GA. Gordon and I were checking into an old fashioned beach front, family-style motel at the same time as a young couple. The young woman told the lady behind the desk that they were getting married that evening at the light house. From the looks if it, it wasn’t one of those weddings that’s been planned in detail for years because they didn’t even have motel reservations and were inquiring about an ocean view room. And apparently there were no family, friends or well wishers with them, just the two of them, telling their good news to a motel clerk and strangers like me who happened to overhear.

It wasn’t a good evening for beach weddings or light house weddings for that matter. Around 6:00 thundershowers moved through. The surf was high and wild, kicked up by Hurricane Bill far offshore. From the little balcony on our room I could see a narrow slice of the beach down an alleyway between two houses. I wiped the blown rain off the chair on the balcony and sat down to watch the waves. The rain seemed to have tapered off but I wasn’t sure if it had stopped since the metal shutters on the house in front of me were still pinging with drips. There wasn’t a soul in sight on the gray patch of beach.

Then, as if on cue, a young couple stepped in front of the small dune directly in my tunnel vision. The young woman was wearing a short white sleeveless dress, the kind you might wear to church. Nothing fancy. She was holding a small nosegay of white flowers, not more than three blossoms. The young man was wearing light colored khaki pants and a sports jacket, not a hint of a boutaineer. A photographer dressed in black was the only other soul in view.

I’m not sure if the couple was on their way to their lighthouse wedding or on their way back, but I knew that I was an unseen witness to their wedding day portrait. Suddenly I wondered if anyone had even said a prayer for them on their wedding day and it seemed that God might have invited me out on the dripping balcony to be His eyes upon them to bless them with an unseen prayer. And so, as befitting an unseen, silent witness, I said a silent prayer. I prayed that whatever was past with the young couple was now unimportant and that God would give them a good and wholesome future together. The photographer snapped a photo. And I smiled from afar and on high, just like God who is always the unseen witness at every wedding and during the lifetime of every marriage.

P.S.: Today is our 36th Wedding Anniversary

Contact Karen Barber at www.personalprayerpower.com

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Answer to Prayer # 1,595: Miracle Car from God

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Recently I wasn’t sure how to pray with much hope about two families who were in dire financial straits after losing their livelihoods. I called my job-seeking friend to see if she needed a ride to Bible study Wednesday night because she didn’t have a car. That’s a gigantic problem out here in the suburbs, especially when you have kids and you have to limit your job applications to businesses on the few and far between streets on the bus route. My friend didn’t answer the phone.

Before Bible study I was chatting with someone when my friend walked in the door. Surprised to see her, I asked her how she’d gotten there. She replied, “I drove. I have a car now.” I was astounded. She said it was a true miracle and an answer to prayer. Before I could get the whole story, the study began.

After the study I was itching to know the details of how my friend got the car. She said with a grateful smile on her face, “I believe this car is a miracle and direct gift from God. I won’t go into the details of who helped me get it. It’s really from God.”

We walked out to the parking lot together and she proudly showed me the “new” car God had given her. It was a clean, well kept sedan (I’m clueless about makes and models) and she explained that it got where she needed to go, although the air conditioning didn’t work.

As I watched my friend drive off in her “miracle car” I pondered what she’d said about the car really being from God. Why had I been so keen on knowing who had helped her get the car? Why had I sat there during the study forming a plausible explanation about some elderly benefactor in our church who could no longer drive passing their car onto my friend?

Then I remembered the provision triangle. A while back when I was wondering about provision, I came up with a picture in my mind of a triangle with God on top and myself down on one corner and another person on the other corner. It illustrated that sometimes God gives things directly to you like the line going directly down from God to you down one side of the triangle. Other times, God gives things to someone else down the other side of the triangle and they then passes them to you along the line on the base of the triangle, or vice versa. I realized that unfortunately, when God’s provisions through someone else’s hands to me, I too often lose sight of the fact it’s really from God.

I got into my car, thankful that God had provided transportation for my friend and thankful that her “new” miracle car had reminded me that no matter whose hands are used to provide for us, it all always comes from God.

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Prayers for a Foreclosed House

Monday, August 17th, 2009

This past weekend a neighbor who’s a real estate agent took us out to see houses in our area because Gordon is nearing retirement age and we might want to make a change. Before we landed in our present home, Gordon’s job had moved us every three years. We’ve owned 9 different homes so far! Maybe that’s why Gordon and I have a hobby of walking through model homes and homes under construction to get ideas even when we aren’t looking to buy.

I’ve told you about us to let you know that we’re veteran house-lookers. Yet I wasn’t prepared for the feelings I had seeing foreclosed homes. We pulled up in front of a nice sized brick home with a front porch. Somebody’s dream house. Yet the house was empty, locked up, weeds were growing in the flower beds. There wasn’t a friendly golden retriever wagging his tail in the fenced back yard and the no one but the breeze stirred an empty swing on the wooden gym set under the inviting shade of the oaks.

I imagined the events that perhaps led to the lost home. A downsizing in the company, a lost livelihood. A big mortgage, maybe even bigger than the current market price of the house. The months of trying to refinance, find a job, make the payments, put gas in the car. Then the reality that, try as they might, they could no longer afford their dream home. There was no alternative but to lock the door and leave forever.

Houses are so much more than bricks and mortar. Four years ago my sister Susan’s dream house burned down to the ground in the middle of the night and I rode the emotional roller coaster with her. I tried to explain to someone, “You don’t expect a house to die.” It’s not helpful when people say, “It’s only material things.” It goes beyond that. Losing a home steals our sense of security. Isaiah says that, “They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.” (Isaiah 65:21) God means for us to have homes.

I don’t have a “big answer” for any of this except for the certainty that when you suffer a loss, big or small, it’s healthy to mourn. Before you can start healing, you have to let yourself feel the loss. I pray that somewhere, somehow the foreclosed family will find someone with whom to share their grief instead of trying to pretend that their loss never happened. I pray that they will go through the hard, long work of grieving well. But most of all, I pray that God will be with them on this difficult part of their life journey as travelers in a foreign land.

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