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 every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings:
Sometimes I forget to practice Mother Teresa’s admonition, “Pray before you do anything.”
I know this to be a truth that works. No matter how mundane the task or how ordinary the need, I need to practice, practice praying before I venture forward, so that this spiritual discipline becomes habitual.
The birdbath in the front patio garden has been defying me. Simply, it is broken again. Two summers back, I removed all the fountain apparatus, caulked cracks and chinks, ran a new plastic tube through the base, and replaced the pump. Voila! I had a functioning fountain that sent up a delightful spray some six inches high and bubbled into the basin below.
The robins immediately took up residence in this moving water. When the pump was on, it was nothing to look out the living-room windows and see five to ten birds vying for their turn in the bath. Their antics were hilarious.
I learned to identify the dominant robins who took over the highest section of the fountain where the water sprayed up. Certain well-worn phrases took on a new currency: “pecking order” came to mind. “Birds of a feather flock together” was another. There were no nuthatches or cardinals fluttering in and out of the water of the fountain. No, this was definitely the robins’ watering-place. They took it over and ruled it as a mass.
Last summer, the fountain died again. Disgusted when it appeared that the pump had died, I didn’t take any time to figure out what had really gone wrong. I bought a new fountain pump at my favorite gardening-supply store, but when I got home, I realized I had purchased a table pump, the configuration of which would not fit in my outside base.
So last summer, I just gave up. We were doing enough projects in the yard. I did order a fountain with a solar pump, which is nice, but it only works in direct sunlight. It went in the backyard garden. Needless to say, we had no robins flying in and out, dive-bombing into the basin, and pecking one another to mark out territorial imperatives. The garden outside my front windows was decidedly lacking without this avian activity.
Two days ago, I bought another pump, but again could not figure out how to thread the thick plug through the plastic line in the base. Oh, God. I breathed that prayer for help at last. Help me to figure this out and get this stupid pump working again.
I decided to check out the porch outlet. It was not working, so I went down to the basement, flipped the switch, came back upstairs, plugged in the new pump, and finally had electricity. Then, I attached an extension cord to the old pump still in my silent fountain and it worked! Aha! Maybe it wasn’t dead after all. Maybe the circuit breaker had simply blown and I hadn’t taken the time to check it. But, did it have enough juice to shoot up a spray of water?
I took the hose, scrubbed off two summers’ worth of debris from the fountain, washed down the front-porch bench, and noticed when I plugged the cord back in that a small shock spit from the outlet. Sure enough, the little motor refused to chug—dead again. I went downstairs to the basement, flicked the circuit breaker, came upstairs, and lo and behold, my little fountain was pumping water again, happily bubbling as though it hadn’t taken a one-year summer hiatus.
This morning I worked early in that garden, and when I’m digging or weeding, raking and deadheading, I love to hear the sound of the fountain. So, I turned it on before I went out the front door. Two hours later, done with my tasks, I took a one-mile walk, came home, greeted my husband, and then looked out the front windows to make sure my temperamental pump apparatus was still working. The robins had returned.
“Oh, David, come here! Watch this.” He had never been home when the flock watered themselves in the moving water. We laughed together at their antics and one of us commented, “It’s nice to provide a happy place like this, isn’t it.”
Pray before you do anything. When I remember to do this, I am often surprised by the amazing results. A “God Hunt Sighting” to be sure!
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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.
