Divine Encounters

We have this HOPE as an anchor for our soul, firm and secure. – Hebrews 6:19

Do you believe in divine encounters?   I certainly do.  Let me tell you about the one I had today.

Yesterday, after fifteen hours of moving boxes, bins, and bedding from one house to another, I crawled into bed utterly exhausted.  When I woke up this morning, stiff and sore from head to toe, I asked God for peace, quiet, stillness, and a little more sleep.  He gave me some much needed rest, but He also threw in something much more valuable: the chance to renew my perspective on thankfulness.     

I took our teenagers out to lunch to celebrate the move.  At their request, we went to our favorite hole-in-the-wall burger joint.  It’s the kind of place where the juicy cheeseburgers, loaded with bacon and avocado, always seem to slide out of their wax paper wrapping.  The onion rings are homemade and the milkshakes are thick and rich.  As we pulled into the parking lot we noticed a young woman holding a sign that read “I’m Hungry.”  My daughters saw her and said, “Mom, we should buy her a burger.”   

While the teens waited in line, I walked around the building to the young woman.  As I approached her, God, as He tends to do, “upped the ask” in my mind so, instead of just offering to buy her food, I invited her to join us for lunch.    

Her reaction was priceless.  Ashley, I'll call her, first looked over her shoulder to make sure I wasn’t talking to somebody else.  Then she smiled, tossed her cardboard sign aside, and almost skipped to the picnic table where we waited for our burgers.  There, Ashley shared her life story.  She had been given up for adoption at birth, but had just recently met her biological mother.  She didn’t elaborate, but the disappointment of that meeting showed on her face.  She was a recovering drug addict who had recently lost custody of her two-year-old daughter. Ashley was determined to get back on her feet and rent the two of them an apartment of their own. She recognized that, in her early twenties and homeless, she was at rock bottom.  

Ashley mentioned several times that she was homeless.  Somehow it had become her identity.  She described life on the streets, the sleeping outdoors, and the fears she faced night after night.  Sitting at that picnic table, Ashley reminded me and my children of how blessed we were.  Looking into her eyes, we could see that we had given her a little hope that life can change for the better, and with God’s help, we can overcome life’s hurdles and hardships.  We parted from this divine encounter as friends.  I will see her later this week at her new job in the gas station I fill up at all the time.  Thanks, God!

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