John 15:4
THOUGHT FOR TODAY, January 10, 2021
“Finding Your Way Home”
“To heal, sometimes. To remedy, often. To comfort. always.” This French proverb has been a guiding light to Christian Clergy for centuries. Another focus of ministry develops over the years . . . looking out for miracles occurring when one least expects them, or fails to look for them.
“The eyes of your understanding being enlightened,” Ephesians 1:18 reveals, “that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of his glory of his inheritance in the saints.” Looking with “eyes of understating being enlightened” is an intentional, spiritually developed skill tempered with increasing wisdom. When as child, I couldn’t grasp any measure of the miracles of God’s presence among us. As a maturing Christian “under construction,” servant of Jesus Christ, I see miracles everywhere!
“A coincidence is a miracle in which God choses to remain anonymous,” someone has said. IT’S TRUE! Here are two miracles, one happening 20 years ago last Sunday, January 3, and another, the day before yesterday, January 7th.
The moving van has just pulled into our residence here in Kingsport, Tennessee, when a pleasant woman came across the road with a plate of baked goods. She had no idea who my Bride and I were. We were just her new neighbors. She didn’t know that that I was retired clergy, nor that I was United Methodist.
“I’d like to invite you to church,” Mrs. Stella Easley said. “You’d better go with us this Sunday, since you might have trouble finding your way home.” We went with them to Depews Chapel United Methodist Church. What a prayer answered! I really didn’t want to “church shop” I had asked God to show me a church in which my family would instantly feel at home. O Yes, what a prayer answered! Nine years later, I became Pastor. Eleven years later, I officiated at this precious Saint of God’s funeral.
This week, my Bride received a call from a friend (90 Years Old), with whom we had not heard from in several years. The conversation was sparked by a clear leading of God for Julie and I to send her and her husband a copy of the devotional “Our Daily Bread.” She related that she read through the entire booklet in a few hours, January through March Articles! “I knew God,” She shared, “But didn’t know how to connect with Him”. She goes on to say that she believes that there are many others just like her who don’t know how to connect to God. Throughout the conversation, she reported that Julie and I awakened a longing for the presence of God in her life. She added, “Your ministry has always been a witness to me!”
Another miracle, in which God remained anonymous, yet used two of His own to reveal His love!
The miracle of God’s choosing to become a human being, by clothing Himself in flesh and blood, is an annual reawakening of our “eyes of understanding, ” opened again and again, for the first time. Christmas is not past. Christ’s Mass is begun again, as we anticipate the blessings of His presence throughout a New Year.
As the Wise Men who “saw the young child with Mary, his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and they had opened their treasures, they presented to him gifts: gold, and frankincense, and myrrh,” departed, in Matthew 2:11 & 12, “into their own country another way.”
Finding God, finding another way . . . May this be your year, and mine, to find God’s miracles in our lives, where we least expect them, where we’d least look, among whom, the least, the last, the lost, lonely and disconnected live. They are everywhere, and anywhere. They are just like us . . . we are just like them, looking to find their way back home. Can we look for miracles as we find our way? Can we help those who feel like they can’t connect to God . . . to find their way back home?
Link to Youtube – It Took a Miracle
