On Saturday we had our church leaders round for lunch. We have moved church recently, from the lovely Church of Ireland church plant in Moneyreagh ( miles and miles away from where we live) to the Vineyard in Lisburn. We are hoping to be moving house to Lisburn soon cos all three boys are now at school there and it is where I work. So we thought we ought to be going to church in town again and have ended up at Vineyard - the lunch was a 'getting to know you' exercise. I explained to Andy and Dana that Id been painting stones and why and they thought it was a neat idea and said I could bring them to church yesterday and they would make an announcement and ask church to distribute the stones round town in the week leading up to Christmas. When I got to church we ended up sitting on the opposite side from usual. I glanced around and my eye landed on Gail who runs a local charity for vulnerable families. I dont know her very well but I had the strong impression that I was to go over to her and ask her what she needed. I sat through the service, waiting for Andy to make the announcement about the stones, which we had brought to church and left at the back of the hall ready to be picked up by people on their way out. But it became apparent as Andy preached that the stones were not going to fit in with the general message of the sermon at all. And right enough, he chose not to mention them and later told me he would do it next week
I went over to Gail and stood waiting for her to finish a conversation. As she turned and saw me - before I could say anything to her- she said ' Oh I was going to come and talk to you today. Did you leave a Jesus stone on my doorstep last night?' I don't even know where she lives! So I told her that no, it wasn't me. (And how weird that she would be talking about Jesus stones when I'd been painting them all week. ) Then she went on to say that she had a nativity scene at home which she had wanted to put up this week but that it was missing a baby Jesus. She had remembered hearing that I painted stones, and as her nativity scene was actually made from stones she thought one of my Jesus babies would do the job. She had decided she would look for me in church on Sunday and ask me if I could get her a stone. But when she opened her door that morning to go to church, there was a Jesus stone all wrapped up on her doorstep. 😊
I told her that it had not been me, but that strangely enough I did actually have a couple of hundred Jesus stones with me in church! To which she replied that she had been so blessed to find her stone that morning that she thought she would take some to give to the vulnerable families she works with - and I was able to send her away with a box full. But not before I had prayed with her about her needs, which was a blessed time indeed.
You would think after thirty years of seeing God in the small stuff that I would no longer be surprised when He weaves things together like this. But I still am.
I came home and emailed my friend Karen who is the only person I could think of who knows about the Jesus stones and who also knows Gail. She hadn't left the stone on Gails doorstep. So it's a mystery. Maybe it was an angel. It seems like such an insignificant and ridiculous thing to get excited about - and of course it is. Except for the fact that it shows that God knows Gail through and through. He knows every thought of her heart and all those tiny little secret wishes which are inconsequential in the greater scheme of things which but matter to her. She wanted a complete nativity scene. It was the smallest ' want' at the bottom of a huge list of big ' wants' I'm sure she has. In meeting this tiny desire in an unexpected way and at the perfect time, God showed Gail yesterday how much He is involved in her life. How closely He is listening. How much He wants to bless her - in the tiny things and the huge things. He was showing her that He can provide her with tangible things that she asks for. And He was showing me that I was right when I got that feeling that I needed to speak to Gail. The stone was just a funny lovely story to tell, but what we prayed about on the back of that incident was much more important and, I trust, significant.
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