In MY DAILY BREAD a few days ago, Marvin Williams tells of an eight-year-old, Carmine McDaniel, who on a very hot day wanted to make sure that his neighborhood mail carrier stayed cool and had plenty to drink. So he left a cooler with a sports drink and water bottles on his front step. The family security camera caught the mail carrier’s reaction: “Oh man, water and Gatorade. Thank God; thank you!”
Carmine’s mom says, “Carmine feels that it’s his ‘duty’ to supply the mailman with a cool beverage even if we’re not home.”
This is more than the story of a very thoughtful little boy. It is instead a beautiful example of a truth that Williams writes farther down the page: God often sends vertical help through horizontal means. And these ‘horizontal means’ are often others, sometimes folks we don’t even know.
Last week my daughter Joyce, with whom I live, was in California celebrating Easter with her son and his fiancé, and I was home alone caring for our lovely dog. But one day I looked out my window and there was happy Matilda sniffing every bush across the road! With my recent knee surgery, I was completely unable to go looking for her, and I went to the back door and called her, with absolutely no hope that she would respond! But just then a young man in a little green car slowed down and yelled that the dog was around the corner, and what was her name? He opened his car door and called her, and ever eager to make a new friend she actually came, spotted the treat in my hand and ran home. A little boy who likes to come and play with her had left the gate unfastened. Not to be outdone, she got out again two days later when someone ELSE left the gate open, so I went and got my coat. And then up the street came two of my young friends (and Matilda’s!) with happy Matilda by the collar, calling out, “We’ve got your dog!” (The boys, not Matilda.)
These were not coincidences. (I don’t believe in coincidences.) And it wasn’t just a matter of saving me a little trouble. They were circumstances which I truly couldn’t have handled. God sent me solutions which I badly needed right in time. As He always does.
Sometimes it works differently, over a long period of time, when we don’t understand what’s going on and sometimes feel deserted. I’ve written about our despair when our son, a devoted Christian, was in prison for someone else’s embezelment of millions of dollars in his company business set aside for the IRS. It took eighteen months for them to straighten it out, and I kept telling myself and my son that God WAS in it, and that it would be OK, every day reminding myself that it was true. Today my son would tell you that he had definitely needed to make some changes in himself, and that God knew it would take a lifetime on his own, so God took the shorter eighteen-month path, and it worked! Another different but related truth: it may have been meant for evil, but God turned it to good.
I have learned to be patient. It’s not easy. But I know that God is present in everything that I experience, and it’s fun to look for what in the world God is doing NOW. But usually it’s little things, that I might ordinarily brush off. Except it’s easy to spot God’s hand if you know to look. And it certainly saves a lot of worrying once you firmly plant this idea in your mind and heart: that God is involved in everything you do; that God sends you help in any number of ways; that God loves it when you recognize that truth and thank Him, even for the little things.
--Norma Stockton
