Archives for September 2012

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

When I travel and have to make transfers from one airplane to another, I generally schedule a couple hours between the scheduled arrivals and takeoffs. But last week, because I booked my flights late, my choices were limited, and I had only one hour to make my puddle-jumper from San Francisco to Modesto, California. In addition, I had forgotten that the American Airlines and United gates were in different terminals.

Bad planning, to say the least. This meant I needed to catch the airport shuttle train, go again through security and although I only had carry-on baggage, to save time and fees, because the overhead bins were reportedly full, the gate attendant in Chicago took my bag and ticketed it through to my destination. To complicate matters, I could not print my boarding pass through my Gmail account. The security line when I finally reached it in Terminal 1 was long and crowded. There was no way I was going to catch my scheduled flight.

I called my friend in Modesto who was picking me up. “I’m just leaving for the airport,” she reported.

“There’s no way I’m going to catch that flight,” I lamented. “American sent my carry-on through to Modesto, but I don’t know if there has been time for it to be transferred between terminals.” My friend agreed to go onto the small airport just in case my baggage came through and was offloaded in Modesto.

Such are the vagaries of flight travel. The one time I broke my own transfer rule, my Chicago plane was half an hour late (on a perfectly pleasant flying day), and I was stuck at the baggage counter in the terminal basement along with a bunch of other passengers reporting missing suitcases.

Next phone call: “Karen, your bags are not down. And what’s more, your flight hasn’t even arrived. I don’t think it’s even left San Francisco. You know what—if you take the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to Pleasanton, we can pick you up there.”

So for the next 20 minutes, I chased down the airport BART station, found a schedule, talked with the woman at the booth (I could purchase a senior pass to Pleasanton for $9). She explained that I would have to get off the train at Balboa, stay right there on that track, then board the train to Dublin/Pleasanton, the end of that line.

I trekked back to the baggage-claim counter; they had found my bag. The flight to Modesto hadn’t even arrived yet in San Francisco (bad weather systems somewhere). My suitcase would be returned to me at Claim Area 6. I called my friend with the latest update, picked up my bag after a 15-minute wait and trekked off to the BART station again, aiming to catch the 4:50 train that would land me in Pleasanton around 5:55. More phone calls, back and forth. Pulling my bag on wheels, I passed the rest of the baggage-claim carousels, up the escalator, across the sky bridge, up another escalator, caught the Air Train, got off at the BART station, down another escalator, found the ticket machine, purchased a ticket, boarded the train, got off at Balboa, caught another train 15 minutes later and disembarked at Dublin/Pleasanton, the end of the line where I waited on one side of the train station while my friends waited, out of sight to one another, on the other side of the station.

All this to realize that whereas we had been paying about $200 for round-trip tickets to and from Modesto, a BART ride to and from Pleasanton would only cost me $18 round-trip. Since I go to Modesto for board meetings at least three times a year, this low fee represented considerable savings. If I caught the BART next time I traveled, it would also save me a three or sometimes four hour wait between my Chicago to San Francisco flights and the departure flight to my destination.

Voila! This is what I call an obvious God Hunt sighting—those times when God intervenes in our lives and we recognize it to be Him. At first, His care for me was not obvious in the confusion of travel, but He definitely was pointing me to a better way. I also noticed as I left the train at the Pleasanton stop that a bus was waiting to transport passengers to Modesto—for another small fee, I imagine. If I could figure the SMART bus route, my friends wouldn’t have to drive far to pick me up—a perfect solution!

I was treated to a wonderful dinner that evening in a marvelous inn tucked into a winery. We watched the sun set behind the California hills, ate outside beneath a spreading oak. The food was prepared beautifully, beyond description. Our conversation was delightful. Since I had roused myself out of bed at 4 a.m. (2 a.m. California time) and had been traveling since David and I left the house at 6, and since I had eaten nothing but yogurt, this lovely event was the culmination of a full day with troublesome moments. Needless to say, the travel day ended well. I also had the incredible satisfaction of discovering that there was a better way, a much, much better way for me to get where I needed to go.

Travel through the years has taught me that when things go wrong, I am not to panic, not to complain. God is still guiding my steps even though I don’t understand exactly what is happening or why. Each particular journey can become a metaphor for the larger journey of my life.

So the next time your plane is delayed, don’t fret. You may find BART (or something comparable) on the other end.

I spy God!

————————————————————————————–

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

Every once in a while, David and I feel moved (jointly and sometimes without previous discussion) to invite into our home people who we think need a safe place to stay. We met a younger couple in our church—they were just visiting because their college-age kids had been attending—and we invited them for dinner. They invited us for dinner. In these two evenings, we gathered enough of their story to understand they were in between housing, in between jobs. In short, they were in that liminal stage that is a terribly uncomfortable place for us humans; that place where the future promise has not met and married the present dilemma.

There were several job interviews in the process, college-aged and high-school kids who needed to make school plans depending upon their parents’ decisions, and the continuation of a career path for the wife, whose life had also been interrupted by her husband’s job situations. Until the job situation was settled, everything hung in a kind of dissatisfactory limbo.

“Just come on and move in with us,” we said. “Stay as long as you need to. Don’t worry about paying rent. Let’s just see what God does. This will give you a space to discover that.”

One friend who dropped by said to me, “Karen, isn’t this too much for you?” I didn’t feel that. Perhaps you will agree with me.

For the full 17 days, I didn’t cook a meal (well, I cooked a few meals but had that joyful camaraderie that comes from cooking together in the kitchen, which doesn’t feel like work). Most of our meals were cooked by the husband. That included backyard barbecues with fish grilled over the coals, breakfasts outside (this was an amazing summer without mosquitoes). We had risotto made from a treasured special family recipe. Brad, our new friend, cleaned the gutters, which were cluttered with all the junk from the summer storms. He sawed old boards to make a top for the old table so I would have a workstation in the yard (also a serving space for outside parties). Lynn, the wife, labored in the back garden, meeting me outside several mornings. Together, we conquered the neglect. She got my new computer set up, spent endless moments on the phone getting my Internet reconnected and figured out the perplexities of installing my Wi-Fi printer—the gift of another friend.

We had lovely conversations in the late afternoon and the early evenings as they struggled to come to terms with what God might be doing in their lives. We told stories and laughed together. David and I were midwives to new ideas. So what do you think? Was this too much for me? Were the guests who stayed for seventeen days a burden?

Well, hardly. In fact, they were a joy. It was a privilege to share our lives and our home with them. They “paid back” more than we would have ever thought to require, more than whatever we might have charged for rent (which at that moment in their lives they couldn’t have possibly afforded).

Instead we gained new friends, people we believe God will use mightily in the world, who just had a little pause in the progression of their lives. They have gone on and are settling back again in their home state. The house has been rescued from foreclosure, the job interviews seem promising, and Lynn is proceeding to find work again in the public health systems as part of a long-term goal of helping to set policy.

You never know who you’re going to find along the way (or who is going to find you). I simply agree with the Scripture in Hebrews that says, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

“Hey,” said David, after our new friends had been with us a couple of weeks. “Did Brad clean all the gutters?”

He certainly did.

I spy God!

————————————————————————————–

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the everyday occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:

September is almost gone. Vacations are over. Yellow school buses pick up students for school. The flags hung for Labor Day have been rolled up and stored away. We wore jackets to work this morning. The leaves on the trees are not yet turning, but we open our doors, look around and say to one another, “Fall is in the air, isn’t it?”

Looking back on the summer, we mark the fact that we endured a long drought, weeks of unusually high temperatures (the third-warmest summer on record), and a destructive derecho that tore out century-old oaks and left our yards, front and back, in ruin.

Yet there were gifts in this summer. The derecho hit our shaded yard on the 29th of June. A week later, crews from our church cleared away the broken limbs, power-sawed down the broken trees, and hauled about 12 truckloads of debris to the street where the city quickly sent out crews to remove the unsightly mounds that reminded us daily of nature’s ugly streak.

On July 8th I realized I would have to retool my gardening skills; our shady glen had turned into a sun-loving paradise. About two weeks later, I noticed that squash vines (or some kinds of vine) were proliferating around the bee hives. I remembered that I had dug in kitchen garbage; something unknown to me and unintended by me was luxuriating in the hours of almost constant sun.

Today, in late September, I have picked four 8-inch white pumpkins from those vines, which have spread themselves over a cleared section of ground that is almost 12 feet by 12 feet. A little research on the cucurbitaceae family provides me with intriguing information: Pumpkin flowers are either male or female. They need to be cross-fertilized. How fortunate that the most intense sun falls on a recently cleared patch where the new beehives have been placed! Part of the amazing growth of these vines (which generally take 90 days to produce fruit) has to be due to the activity of our non-hostile bee population.

Some of God’s gifts come to us without our planning and without our asking. Every time I pass this outdoor room full of pumpkin vines and spy the white rounds peeping out from under the great green leaves, I laugh. God’s incongruity in my life—His working despite me, around me, instead of me—is worth my full-throttle guffaws. I’ve labored over the pitiful front yard garden, which was totally eliminated by drought, scorching temperatures and too-much shade—I’m planning to dig everything under but the strawberry plants. But I have done nothing—NOTHING—to encourage the wild growth of the white pumpkins. I didn’t even plant the seeds. I simply dug in the kitchen garbage.

Unfortunately, I suspect there is a dark worm hardening in the depths of my soul, a moldering fungus of attitude that really thinks God’s work in the world is dependent upon my gifts and my efforts and my activities. How the lowly glowing white pumpkins decry this fallacy. God is not dependent upon me or upon what I do. He does, however, delight in collaborating with me when He so chooses.

September is almost gone, and I am laughing at the white pumpkins on the vine, who owe nothing to me, but everything to the sun and the storm-cleared patch and the busy bees, and who are now turning their round, washed faces to give praise to the One who is really responsible for their very being. Sometimes the gifts that come our way without planning or asking are the best gifts of all.

I spy God!

————————————————————————————–

Award-winning author Karen Mains has long had an interest in spiritual formation and the obedient Christian walk. She has written about the God Hunt in her book by the same name, The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found. A hardback copy can be ordered from Mainstay Ministries for $10.00 plus $4.95 shipping and handling. Contact Karen at info@mainstayministries.org and she will be happy to autograph a copy for you.

Karen continues to write content for her Christian blog, “Thoughts-by-Karen-Mains.” In so doing, she desires to touch the lives of Christian women and men and help them find ways to walk closer with the Lord Jesus Christ. In addition, through silent retreats, spiritual teaching, women’s retreats, Christian vacation opportunities, and other ministry activities, Karen helps each Christian woman and man receive vital spiritual food.

Through her Hungry Souls ministry, Karen serves as a spiritual coach to many Christian women and men, and teaches a mentor-writing class. And, through the Global Bag Project, she is working to develop a network of African women who sew exquisite cloth reusable shopping bags, Africa bags. This micro-finance women opportunity helps provide a much-needed sustainable income for struggling African families. For more information on this critically important project, please click here.

For decades, Karen and her husband, David, have served God through religious communications—radio, television, and print publication. They are the co-authors of the Kingdom Tales Trilogy: Tales of the Kingdom, Tales of the Resistance, and Tales of the Restoration. To find many valuable resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries main website, please click here.

Likewise, pastors will find special resources to help them prepare effective, life-transforming Sunday sermons by visiting David Mains’ website by clicking here.

Share this Article