Unwonted invitation

Do you ever hesitate to invite someone in fear they’ll decline?  I mean, how disappointing would it be to invite a new friend for coffee, or how embarrassing could it be to try to gather a group together, but in the end no one comes?  I’m hoping this week’s story encourages you.  A couple of weeks ago, I invited some friends to my house to study.  I hadn’t seen these friends this summer, and I was eager to brew my new pack of Community Coffee and laugh with these girls and seriously study all at the same time.  But one by one, their emails replied no, can’t come, not this time.  The first said, “Sorry, Linda, but I’m going on vacation.”  The next one said, “Yes, I’ll be there,” but in the end she didn’t come because her children were sick.  Still another friend wrote, “I’m intending to come, Linda, but I’m waiting for a certain phone call that will determine whether I can or not,” and evidently her phone call didn’t allow her to come.  All the while, I held to my lesson plan, hoping for even just one friend to be available, as I had prayed before ever emailing the invitation and didn’t want to abandon the date and topic I felt the Lord gave me.  Thursday night I stayed up late to fine-tune some teaching points on 2 Samuel 9.  Friday morning came, it was 10:30, and no one arrived.  The clock hit 11 AM, and still no one.  The house surely felt empty.  My heart felt a little hollow too.  Yet there was no point in sitting around just being sad.  And then around 11:15, an interesting thing happened.  The phone rang, and I noticed it was a friend from church.  Often he asks me to substitute-teach, and so my brain started to race in excitement, though I didn’t want to get too excited too soon.  This friend explained he had been sick with allergies, and would I teach his class on Sunday?  Almost jumping through the phone, I exclaimed, “Yes, I’ll be happy to teach!”  And in reality my heart had already leaped its first tall building in a single bound.  I had this freshly unused lesson so eager to be taught.  I felt the corners of my mouth stretching into the hugest of smiles to realize 2 Samuel had just found its new time and place.  And come Sunday, our lesson proved wonderfully fruitful.  All the way through, the Lord kept giving insightful discussion across the class.   Afterward I pondered the whole sequence of events.  Why did the Lord lead me to invite the Friday group in the first place?  He could have bypassed that invitation, given that none of them attended anyway.  In staring at my calendar, I realized He timed things perfectly to have me stay up late Thursday to study because Friday and Saturday already held music commitments.  Certainly He knew the schedule of things.  Perhaps I invited the Friday group because someone there felt lonely.  Maybe the Lord blessed them through the invitation to know they were thought of and included and loved, even though they couldn't come.  I do know I was blessed in the thrill of seeing the Lord connect multiple dots along a road that seemed to meander here and there.  Isaiah 55 talks about the Lord’s word never returning void, and so all the more reason we have to proceed when He leads us to offer invitations.  Regardless of any outcome visible or invisible to us, He speaks with large-scale purpose, bringing to fruition as He sees fit.