Sometimes ó a lot of times, actually ó God puts us in the right place at the right time.
A couple of recent examples:
– Diana is our crackerjack church secretary. Not much gets by her.
One morning last week, Diana had spoken with Colleen a couple of times about the poinsettias we always order at Christmas.
The second time the women talked, Colleen didn’t sound quite right ó but Diana didn’t think too much about it.
Diana also needed to speak to Shirley, so in a few minutes, she picked up the phone to call her.
Now, Shirley’s and Colleen’s numbers are pretty similar.
Diana got Colleen instead of Shirley.
Which turned out to be a good thing.
“I’m sick,” Colleen told Diana.
“If she’s saying she’s sick,” Diana said later, “there’s something bad wrong.”
Colleen had been in the basement, cooking mints the way she always does this time of year.
She felt a little nauseated, so she decided to sit down. It takes 30 minutes for the mints to cook, so she knew she had plenty of time.
The next thing she knew, she was laid out across the chair and the pot was burned black.
“I was just praying that I could sit back up,” Colleen said later.
That’s when the phone rang.
Diana immediately hung up and called Colleen’s daughter, who rushed over from next door.
There was smoke everywhere, but Colleen was OK.
Her doctor told her later she may have had a mini-stroke, but there wasn’t definitive evidence of that.
Could have been a “spell,” as my grandmother used to say.
Diana doesn’t take credit for her “misdialing.”
“That was all the good Lord,” she said this week. “I was just his instrument. I don’t know what we’d do without Colleen. I was happy to be an agent of God.”
Now she knows Colleen’s number by heart.
– I had lunch with my co-worker Chilly on Monday, and she told me this story about Judy, one of our former Post colleagues.
Over the years, Judy and her husband have found, refurbished and sold furniture to people who need it.
“This has allowed us over the past years to help many people, and to meet a lot of very wonderful folks,” Judy said.
These included two women who came last week to purchase a kitchen table and four chairs for a family who had nothing.
What else do they need? Judy asked.
“Bunk beds” was the answer.
Well, Judy and her husband had no bunk beds, but they decided to be on the lookout for them. They prayed about it before they went to bed.
Next morning they went to a yard sale and found ó you guessed it ó a perfect set of bunk beds.
The name of the street?
Grace.