The Lord, Indeed, Does Sweet, Sweet Things
(The story of how God brought a buyer for our house – a little long, but worth it!)
(by Laura) (posted Sept. 9)
Ask me who my spiritual mothers have been, and a woman named Cindy is one you’ll always find on the short list. Cindy’s history with my family goes WAY back, but her greatest influence in my life occurred when she was a young college graduate and I was a young teen. Newly home from Auburn University, Cindy taught my Wednesday night girls’ Bible study, and her influence and passion for the Gospel profoundly affected me.
Cindy also hosted a youth Bible study I attended at her home on weekends, and it was at that Bible study that Steven and I first met. Through another connection, Cindy had become a mentor to Steven as well, and her then-future husband was his Sunday night discipleship leader.
On Aug. 28, I called Cindy to see if we might get together with them and share a bit about what God has been doing in our lives, our call to Ireland, and our support-raising process. Neither I (nor Steven) ever dreamed God would use this call to sell our house. But He did, and the way things transpired left us all in AWE of Him. We had been praying for eight days that God would sell our house by the end of month.
Here’s how it all happened:
In the course of my conversation with Cindy, I told her the name of the city where we live.
“I didn’t know you live in Moody,” she said.
My response: “We do.”
“Danielle’s fiance’ just got a job in Moody. They’re looking for a house there.” (Danielle is Cindy’s daughter.)
My response: “Really? We have a house we’re trying to sell. It’s a great house on St. Clair Road. Tell her to check it out.”
“Well, they have a budget you know.”
My response: “It’s not an expensive house, Cindy, but it’s a great house. St. Clair Road.”
We continued with some other conversation, then set a time to get together. Just before we hung up, Cindy asked about the house. “Tell me your full address,” she said. “I’m going to have Danielle check it out [on the Internet].”
My response: “It’s 1112 St. Clair Road. It really is a great house.”
We hung up, and I left home for several hours to run some errands. When I returned, I had a message on my voicemail from Cindy. “Laura. This is Cindy. Danielle and I have just driven by your house, and you’re right … it’s a gorgeous house, a wonderful house. If it’s ok with you, we want to come see it. Give me a call.”
So, of course, I called her back. And this is what she said:
“The Lord just does sweet things, Laura. I don’t know what will come of it, but the Lord just does sweet, sweet things. They (Danielle and her fiance) almost put a contract on a house last night, but they just didn’t have peace about it. They thought, ‘If we were supposed to buy this house, we’d feel better about it.’ So they didn’t put a contract on the house. Then I talked to you this morning. And the Lord just does sweet, sweet things.”
“I hung up from talking with you,” she continued, “and I walked downstairs with your address on a piece of paper in my hand. I was going to tell Danielle to look it up. When I stepped into the room, she was sitting at the computer, looking at real estate, with a house on the screen. I backed out of the room, and said, ‘Danielle, tell me the address of the house you have on the screen.’
‘It’s 1112 St. Clair Road, Mom. I just keep coming back to this house. This is the third or fourth time I’ve been back to this site to this house.’”
(OUR HOUSE! At the precise moment when Cindy entered the room, Danielle was looking at our house, and she had done so multiple times!)
Cindy said she sat down immediately and told her daughter the long history of her connection to Steven and me, how we’d dated as teens and then married, how he’d eventually entered full-time ministry, and how God, now, had called us to overseas ministry after 43 years in the same place. Cindy said they got in the car immediately and drove to our house. “We drove into the neighborhood, and saw that lake, and thought, ‘Who would have ever thought there was such a beautiful little community right off of highway 411?’ And then we drove up in front of your house, Laura … we looked at each other and said to one another, “Who in the world WOULDN’T want it?”
“Well come on and take a look!” I said.
That was on Friday, Aug. 28. Over the course of the next several days, Cindy’s daughter and future son-in-law came to see the house several more times. Finally, a contract was settled the morning of Sept. 3. God had answered our prayer for a buyer by the end of the month (he just didn’t let us know he’d done it til a few days later)!
Of course, there’s still a process to go through. We look expectantly to the next month, as inspections take place and a closing is scheduled to occur. But barring any unforeseen difficulties, we’ll hand over our home on Oct. 16 to a young couple whose family is part of our spiritual heritage. Can it get any better (or more gracious of God) than that?!
* * *
Grieving (by Laura) (posted March 25)
This month brought with it the sudden, tragic illness and death of a 43-year-old neighbor and friend, Janie. Among others, she left behind a seven-year-old little girl.
The sadness of Janie’s passing was exceeded only by the heartache that I was uncertain where my friend stood spiritually. We had talked about things of faith many times, and I had shared the gospel in the context of those conversations, but I had never asked the hard questions.
And so I grieved, not just for her family, not just for the loss of her friendship, but for my own failure to be BOLD, my own failure to LOVE her enough.
In that place, Jesus met me. And the Gospel was very good news.
* * *
Dying (by Steve) (posted Feb. 4)
“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”
- G.K. Chesterton
I haven’t read Everlasting Man, the source of this quote, so I don’t know the original context or Chesterton’s main thought. However, since discovering this quote, I have returned to it often. The past month or so, I have experienced what I like to think Chesterton intended.
Imagine a stream, pure and cold, flowing with purpose toward a great sea. There is on the stream a dead leaf, slightly cupped and floating, moving with the current. The leaf has no ambition but what is dictated by the stream. Wholly unconcerned with itself, it moves with the ebb and flow of the twisting terrain. Take a step further, and imagine that the leaf was made by the sea and can only find its purpose, its life, there. And so, the leaf floats, dead to its old thoughts of life on a withering tree, carried along by the current toward its creator.
Also imagine that beneath the surface of the stream there is a beautiful fish. The fish knows of the sea, but is scared what will happen if he surrenders to the current. He knows the sea is vast and that if he goes there, he will have to give up the familiarity of his home, and so he fights the current. He has a strength, and works hard to maintain his existence in the stream. He fights. He’s sure that his home in the stream is a better, safer, happier place than the sea.
The call of the Gospel is a call to death, to crucifixion. Often I’m that fish, seeking to hold on to a life that provides me safety, security, or at least a life I control. My flesh asserts a lot of strength. The call of the Gospel is to lose that life. Lose to find. Lose to gain. Often I don’t want to find, to gain. I don’t want to die to my conceptions of wholeness, security and rightness. I don’t want to go with the current that leads to my father. So I fight, swimming hard to keep what defines me — my success, my reputation, my sense of fulfillment….
And then the Gospel comes. The current overwhelms me. I see my fighting. I taste the water that has been flowing around me and discover again its sweetness. I turn and go with the current, becoming the leaf, glad that death has come, glad that I can now really live.
