Mysterious Ways

The phone rang at 6.25am and as I suspected it was Mad Trevor. Once I'd ascertained that nothing was actually wrong I rather too firmly informed him we'd speak later and virtually put the phone down. Armed with a cup of tea, I called back. 'I've been awake worried all night, and I tried my best not to call you till the morning,' he said, 'You were lucky I didn't call you in the middle of the night.' I refrained from saying that, on the contrary, it was he who was lucky he hadn't called in the middle of the night. 'God has revealed to me', he went on, 'that he is angry with me for asking him for a wife and that's why I'm being punished. He has other things in store for me. That's why you're on your own, too', he added for good measure. I no longer try to argue with Trevor and just let him get on with it.

God had a lot on that day. We have a local Christian youth work charity whose newest member decided she wasn't going to stay, not an easy decision as she doesn't have a job to return to. So she had to be clear that that's what God wanted her to do, and not only prayed herself but 'all the Bible verses people gave me pointed in the same direction'. But she was equally clear God wanted her to come here in the first place. God hadn't seen fit to inform the director of the organisation who took her on that he'd decided to send her back home again. How to explain this? Well, God must have had his reasons for uprooting her a hundred miles and then sending her all the way back again that justified wasting the money the charity spent on job adverts, salary, accommodation and so on. The alternative is to believe that God is less interested in where we happen to be or what we happen to be doing in any detail than in the state of our souls, and as virtually any situation can be one of spiritual growth (and in fact should be) we can read his activity into anything that happens. Hm. Perhaps we've hit on an answer.

I spoke to Trevor later on in the day, and he told me that because he had asked God again for a wife, the Lord had changed his mind.