There’s something I say to myself whenever I’m blown away by God’s intervention in my life in a way that defies explanation. Here’s what I ask, “God, how do you do that?”

That happened this past Sunday.  Here’s the backstory.

My daughter called me that Saturday to tell me my grandson had “croup”. Not too serious right?

Wrong.

He has Down syndrome and therefore an upper respiratory infection can be more serious for him than for a child with normal nasal passages. He is two years old and the cutest little boy you can imagine. So-o-o-o-o,-I offered to go and watch him as both her and her husband had meetings coming up at their perspective jobs. As I’m pulling out of the driveway I get a message saying they’d found a sitter. Two hours later she learned the sitter could only watch him part of the day. Thank goodness I hadn’t unpacked.  So, I get in the car and take off.

Before I left, I grabbed some of my inspirational CD’s. (I get bored easily. I think I’ve mentioned that before.) Three hours with only me and my thoughts are not good. I paid no attention to which tapes I grabbed. (By the way, just so you know and just so I’m clear, I’m not a believer that God engineers every little thing in my life. I’m not a puppet and He doesn’t pull my strings. Throughout Scripture, God speaks about our personal responsibility for our actions.  But I do believe that God works through our lives in unusual ways. (Usually I find this is because we didn’t get the message through conventional methods.) 

Earlier in the week, I’d found myself discouraged about my blog. I wanted to reach out to more people.  I knew I have a story to tell and a helpful message for anyone who battles depression.  I’d been there done that, and now longer suffered depression. I knew I had learned some valuable lessons that would help others with their depression,

I’m sure others work hard as hard on their posts as I do. But, of course, I take it to the “inth” degree.  I evaluate every word. I do a lot of editing. I re-write until they’re as accurate and helpful as they can be.  I work on the technical side of blogging every week, constantly trying to improve it. Honestly, I had no idea blogging could be so time-consuming and such hard work.

Now come back with me on the trip. I pop in a tape at random and guess what it’s about? It’s about how as Christians

• we need to lay the foundation first before God can build on it (I knew that)
• we need to let God do His work on his own timetable (I knew that)
• we should never judge our progress by comparing ourselves (or our blog) to others (I knew that)
• how success often comes after years and years of plugging away at something (even a blog). (I knew that)

There are very few overnight sensations. Obviously, in a three-hour trip, I listened to a few different tapes. Each of them seemed directed to me specifically. None of it was new and yet all of it was new.

“God, how do you do that? How do you take a car trip when I’m by myself for three hours and can do nothing BUT hear you speak that you turn up the volume?  How do you always know when I’m at the end of my rope and only need a little encouragement to stay on course? How do you take a negative and turn it into such a positive? Really, God, just how do you do it?”

For skeptics out there who think this was all a coincidence, you can think what you want.  That’s your choice.  But I’ve learned to recognize God’s intervention in my life. I know His voice. I expect His to show up. He has a track record with me that way.  It didn’t happen overnight though.

I’ve spent my life getting to know God as much as it’s possible to know God. He has graciously responded. Yes, some would say I subconsciously picked those specific tapes; that I subconsciously read something into the timing and the message. All I can say to that is, try it.

Give God a real chance.

You don’t have to know anything, do anything, feel anything. God will take care of all that.  If you do, I guarantee you, too, will eventually find yourself declaring,

“God, how do you do that?”

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