Years ago, I was out on playground duty at the Catholic school where I taught when a small boy ran up to me and handed me a necklace.
“I think this belongs to Jenny,” he said. “She’s in Sister Mary’s class.”
I put the necklace in my pocket, not really thinking much of it. Kids were always finding things on the playground, usually trash.
A few minutes later, I spotted Sister Mary standing in front of the school, and I handed her the necklace.
“Oh praise the Lord,” she said. “I prayed this morning that the necklace would be found and here you are.”
It was an odd moment for me.
I had never had a role before in the fulfillment of someone else’s prayer. Or, at least, I had never stopped to consider how God uses me.
Sometimes we get so caught up in God answering our own prayers that we don’t stop to think how God uses us to answer each other’s prayers.
Two years ago, my mom called me, frantic, saying there was something wrong with her father, that he didn’t sound right on the phone. She lives in New York and, at the time, my grandfather was living here in Florida only a few miles down the road from me.
My level of concern should have been low. It wasn’t the first time she had called frantic about my grandfather and he had always been okay in the past. And, most importantly, he didn’t live alone. He lived with his girlfriend.
Instead, I interrupted my mom after about ten seconds and told her I would drive to his house to check on him. Fifteen minutes later, I was standing in his living room.
I knew the moment I saw him that something was wrong. He looked like a lost child, confused, lonely and afraid. He wouldn’t look me in the eye and I had to crouch down and peer up at him in order to make eye contact. His girlfriend explained that they had called the doctor and the doctor had said to take him to the hospital but my grandfather refused to go.
“Grandpa,” I said, “we’re going to the hospital, now. You need to walk outside and get in my car.”
Perhaps it was the tone of my voice, something I had perfected teaching 8th graders every day, but he got in the car. Only later, at the hospital, did we find out he was having a stroke.
He recovered and while I don’t know that my getting him to the hospital made a huge difference, I know it comforted my mom that I was there, and I have no doubt that God sent me to my grandfather that day.
When I think back to Sister Mary and the necklace and to my grandfather and his stroke, I am reminded that the world does not revolve around me and that God will use me to help others.
Hope Episcopal was the first church I walked into and didn’t immediately think “how can this church serve my needs?” Instead, I had a John F. Kennedy moment. I didn’t want to know what the church could do for me. I wanted to know what I could do for them.
As I get to know the people of Hope, I discover more and more that no one happened upon the church by accident. There are no coincidences, only God-things (as church members are fond of saying), moments in time when God’s presence is so obvious it can’t be ignored.
God will use you for your own good and for the good of others, and sometimes all He needs for you to say is “yes.” Yes, I will take this necklace to Sister Mary. Yes, I will go check on my grandfather. Yes, I will go to this church.
Yes.
