Bang! Boom! Crack! I’d just been hit from behind on my Monday morning commute and it’s difficult to say the order of events, because when it happens it feels like it happens all at once. I was shell shocked. I do believe life is this way as well. When chaos ensues it’s hard to say from which way it came and where it goes from here. You’re just in the middle of the storm attempting to find your bearings, but you find yourself standing still watching the world around you spin. Suddenly, you feel like a spectator to your own life. In my not-so-brilliant moments when everything is beyond my control, that’s when I recognize most how alive God truly is. During my car accident, one of the change jars I was planning to distribute as a fundraising effort broke. And that was a bit disappointing, since earlier in the week I’d discovered another one of my jars was missing, it’d been taken somehow. There was a part of me that was trying to elicit a good Christian response about the whole situation by trusting God in faith, but frankly I was annoyed and a bit irked. Monday evening after my accident and work day, I made my usual long L.A. commute to bible study and several friends donated items to my soon approaching garage sale fundraiser. As one of my friends helped me load donation items into my car, she said, “I have something for you,” and I heard her and said,”Okay,” but I didn’t really give it much thought. What happened next made my heart leap, she comes from her car with a jar filled to the brim with coins and says, “I can’t make it to your fundraisers coming up,” but she wanted to help. God is amazing, and I am so happy to be in the room with a friend who looks so much more like Jesus than me. That same day, she’d been let go from her seasonal job and still donated items to my garage sale and gave me a gift that she didn’t know it at the time was eating away at me, because I’d broken an empty jar and lost one earlier in the week and here she hands me a full jar and once I deposited the coins I had another empty coin jar to reuse. God restored through her. And another friend who couldn’t attend my upcoming event, reached out to find out how to still donate and he donated immediately. Love I don’t deserve, but that’s the gospel, isn’t it? God keeps challenging me to see He’s alive and He is good. Overwhelmingly good.
Now, the goodness didn’t stop there. It never does. But first, my garage sale was supposed to take place today, but southern California has decided to be especially rainy recently. This morning, it rained and I was bummed. Inevitably, my friends and I postponed the garage sale. Sometimes, you have great plans drawn up for fundraising and the pace at which you want to reach your goals. Then, plans change. I don’t know about you, but I’m always pleading, why God? I thought this plan was decent. But inside, I was reminded that I still really don’t understand patience. And Psalm 27:14 comes to mind, “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” At times, I get in a rush and I constantly have to remind myself everything doesn’t have to be fast. Oddly enough, on Thursday I asked my bible study to pray for me to have some alone time, I’d been in such a frenzy I hadn’t taken time to be still with myself or God. With the postponement of the garage sale, I finally had time to stop and I went to my happy place to praise God through song at my church as I prepared for Sunday service. When I checked my email, I discovered one of my friends signed up to give monthly to my trip. And I’d woken up to another friend having donated as well. Without even trying, God still came through today even if I didn’t fundraise as planned. God is alive and He is good. And He wants me. The moment I took time to be with Him and praise Him is the moment He’s taking care of the rest. And in case you were wondering, everyone involved in the car accident came out alright.
