Some of my thoughts

I’m trying to develop the habit of recognizing God’s hand in my life. Too often I just accept His provision, protection or other intervention as coincidence, or I’m tempted to feel abandoned. This week He’s made His hand obvious, and it makes me want to keep looking for it. It’s exciting – like a treasure hunt.

After the Christmas holidays, I’ll be carpooling with a friend for the drive to A and S’s school. That in itself is a blessing, since that can take up several hours a week. The biggest blessing (and clearly God’s hand in the situation!) is that she prefers to take them in the mornings, and I will pick them up at lunchtime. She said, “I thought maybe it would help you too, since you can start school with C earlier on those mornings.” She probably has no idea exactly how much I appreciate that, although I did tell her it was a big help to me! Praise the Lord for His hand of provision.

This afternoon I was helping C type up some thank-you notes for birthday and Christmas gifts, and I heard A and S playing upstairs. About the time that it occurred to me that they sounded awfully close for being upstairs, I heard Mme Pauline instruction A to “descend” in a rather serious voice. (She was outside, I was in the living room, directly underneath their window.) I hurried upstairs and found A standing and S sitting in the window, with only a flimsy screen between them and a 3 meter drop to the concrete below. You can believe that I grabbed them off of there as quickly as I could without scaring them. My heart was pounding and the tears were just below the surface as I tried to tell them exactly how dangerous that is. Thank you, Lord, for Your hand of protection.

After almost 10 years of being married to a pilot, I very rarely deal with fear about M being in an accident anymore. (That’s a testimony to God’s activity in my life, right there!) However, this morning when he was out flying, I realized that every time he comes home safely it is a gift from God. I’m not diminishing M’s skill as a pilot in any way, but I am aware of such things as “mechanical failures” and “pilot error” and I am also aware of God’s grace! Interestingly enough, one of the last times that I really worried about M while he was flying and had to pray all morning to control the panicky feeling rising in my chest, he came home to tell me that he had a moment or two of concern that morning. I won’t ignore those feelings in the future! I’m grateful for the Holy Spirit to prompt us to pray when we need to.

Recently we saw God’s hand in our lives when He gave M a clearly prophetic dream, warning us to change an area of our lives. Deuteronomy 8:5 sprang to my mind, “Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you.”

Feel free to use the comments to share your stories, if you’d like to. I’d love to hear them.