Drenched & detoured

Have you ever experienced something just too unusual to be human?  Maybe some sort of remarkable timing that made you pinch yourself to see if it's real?  One Saturday in December, we awoke to that very thing.  The alarm buzzed at 6:30, and we grabbed the guitar, our music, and a couple of granola bars to hop in the car.  Without news of the extent of the night’s rainfall, we knew nothing about road closures.  From the highway, we saw lower roads with cars stranded.  We ran into flashing lights and road blocks, and when we hit a major detour, I highly suspected we’d be late for music.  Possibly too, we might be absent entirely.  And my heart sank to imagine the precious faces of people we'd miss:  friends and guests who give and receive food, clothes, and the love of the Lord.  But along this detour, I started remembering driving this way once to a funeral.  I recalled no low sections of road that would flood, so my mind sighed in relief, though we soon encountered a train, but there the Lord reminded us of another alternate route we’d taken to a different funeral.  Now I'm smiling huge to realize we weren't going to be late for music after all!  Quite amazing, really.  Considering our trek was across the city, from far north to north central to east side, we were amazed at how the Lord directed traffic in our favor.  And as my heart bubbled in glee, I kept realizing more.  While praying 2 days before, I felt inclined to prepare Rita Springer’s song “I Have to Believe.”  I charted the chords and loaded the piano Friday night, and now it’s crossing my mind that if indeed the Lord imparted that song for today, then actually no amount of torrential rain could've ever thwarted the singing of it, meaning that the night's rain was never really a deterrent but maybe just twisted into temptation for us to lose focus.  Still too, there was the added blessing of remembering I didn’t even have this piano till 2 years ago when a friend said the Lord inclined her to give it to me from her grandson.  How sweet is that!  I felt wonderfully saturated in blessing, just immensely loved in the details.  I stood in awe of how the Lord set our sequence of events in motion, drawing from our travel on these detoured roads in years past, yet purposing for a song today.  Even toward the importance of attending funerals, I felt a nudge of encouragement.  Second Corinthians 3:5 tells us, “Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.”  And so may you too experience the joy of seeing the Lord at work around you.  So precise is His orchestration.  You’re in my prayers.