Purposed
On Divine Appointments and the Blessing of Participating in the Love of God
Several weeks ago, before the upheaval of February, I serendipitously ran into an acquaintance of long ago. It had been fifteen years since I’d seen her, and at first, I wasn’t sure it was her. She had been a friend of a friend, and I knew my friend had lost touch with her some years prior, in the midst of crisis and loss. But she was one of those people whose name came up from time to time, wistfully, because my friend had liked her very much. I had too, during our brief acquaintance. And we had a vague idea that there had been trauma in her life, and we cared. So every once in a while, we would wonder aloud to each other how she was and regret that we no longer had a connection to her, as you do.
She was sitting in the waiting room of my daughter’s OT office, crocheting. I was there at our regular time, and I’d never seen her there before. Not fully convinced of her identity, I pulled up Facebook. Social media research to the rescue. I found her profile. The pictures were old, but I was more sure it was her sitting there on the other side of the waiting room. And if I was wrong, well—people are usually kind about mistaken identities. I stood up and went over to her.
She looked up and spoke before I had a chance.
“I knew you looked familiar,” she said.
We spent the rest of our children’s appointments chatting easily, catching each other up. As she shared an overview of the past few seasons of her life, which included a lot of grief and loss on a variety of fronts, what I felt was that our unplanned meeting was important. I was being prodded to pay attention and not waste it. When our conversation was interrupted by the return of our children, I quickly asked her how to get in touch.
“Facebook,” she said. “I don’t check it often, but I’ll keep an eye out for a message from you.” With that, I knew our meeting was somehow important to her too.
On the way home, I called my friend. We marveled together at the incredibility of it. We talked about divine appointments. This was someone we had cared about, had wondered about. And suddenly—there she was.
Several weeks passed, all my focus taken up by loss and recovery, then the need to reestablish peace and centeredness for myself. And then one afternoon, as I sat at my desk working on a freelance project, her name suddenly flashed into my mind. It felt urgent. Don’t forget again. Then and there, I messaged her, hoping not too much time had passed. But she replied right away. We moved to texting. We agreed to meet for breakfast two days hence. I texted my friend, who said she would be there.
The three of us spent a lively hour and a half at that breakfast. And it felt meant. Purposed. In the fifteen years since we last connected, we have all experienced loss, grief, rejection, and trauma. We have more in common now than we did then. We were all hungry for authentic connection. We were all hungry for the healing grace of simple friendship and a sense of in-it-togetherness in this crazy time in which we live and move and have our being.
I share this story to remind us all that it’s so deeply good to be open to whatever God places in front of us. To move when He nudges. To be His instrument of grace. To be a willing participant in the work of Christ by loving one another. In so doing, we will usually find that we are ourselves filled to the brim by His goodness.
Selah.