A few weeks ago, I prepared to head out on a prayer walk around our neighborhood with one of my teammates soon after we finished dinner. However, our departure was delayed about an hour as we did battle with a clogged toilet.
[pullquote type=”right”]There I was, ready to get out into the neighborhood…and I get stuck playing plumber.[/pullquote] As I stood in our bathroom, plunger in hand, waiting for water to boil (who knew – dish soap and boiling water cures these things!), I kept thinking about how this is not what I had envisioned for our community outreach time. There I was, ready to get out into the neighborhood, pray for its people, and hopefully encourage some of them along the way, and I get stuck playing plumber.Eventually our foe was vanquished, and so, an hour behind schedule, we struck out into the community. The first person we saw was our downstairs neighbor, who was on the phone. She flagged us down and asked if we would be willing to go over to one of our pastor’s houses to help mend a broken tree branch. We headed on over, and soon enough the partially-snapped branch was bolted back in place and duct-taped for good measure. [pullquote type=”left”]It seemed that Jack, underneath his confident veneer of being fine with not knowing about God, is seeking truth.[/pullquote]
Having done our part to help, we headed down the street to officially begin our prayer walk, now about two hours behind schedule. We had scarcely done much praying when we came across two men by the edge of the park. We struck up a conversation, and eventually a third man, who I’ll call Jack, joined us.
It was getting dark, and so the other men headed off, but Jack, who had found out we were Christians, invited us to walk around the park with him. He did the lion’s share of the talking, so we scarcely got a word in edgewise, but when we were getting ready to part ways, he expressed how he had really enjoyed talking with us. He is an agnostic, but he kept telling us that he would love to discuss spiritual topics again.
“You aren’t going to convince me,” he would say, but then he would again express his interest in talking with us in the future. It seemed to both me and my teammate that Jack, underneath his confident veneer of being fine with not knowing about God, is seeking truth. “The only way I’m going to change is if I get better evidence,” he told us. [pullquote type=”right”]It is clear to me how God had orchestrated the events of that evening the way He did to put the right people in our path at the right time.[/pullquote]
It is clear to me how God had orchestrated the events of that evening the way He did to put the right people in our path at the right time. If we hadn’t been working on unclogging our toilet for an hour, it’s likely we never would have run into Jack.
This summer, I am learning to rest in God and His timing, and also learning to believe God really is big enough to manage His own Save-the-World program without Daniel Morrison needing to do all the work for Him. And, as I found out a few weeks ago, sometimes He likes to use toilet plungers to accomplish His plan.
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