The Culture of Hope Founded on Faith
Every Detail
Last week I was on the East coast for an interview with Dr. Angela Chester for her Daily Spark TV program. Getting there and back was a very interesting journey because God gave me divine appointments everywhere I went – from the Bangladesh marketing student next to me on the first flight out, to the HR guy going to interview a prospective employee on the second leg of that journey, and to the shuttle driver who was a 20-year navy veteran driving me through Norfolk, VA, telling me all about the area and the naval base there. I found that each one was a divine appointment with whom I could share my story, including the gospel, because the inevitable question of where I was going and why came up with each one.
But it was the trip back that became really interesting. Two of the other authors in the group being interviewed last week were on the same flight with me from Newport News so I had a chance to get to know Valerie Katz and Robert Martin Bishop a lot better. Here’s why: we boarded the plane at 6:30 AM. An hour and a half later we deplaned back into the terminal while the ground crew figured out and repaired a mechanical issue. Once back in the waiting area we sat together and talked for more than two hours before we returned to the plane.
We had reservation seat numbers so we did not sit together on the plane. My seatmate was a gentleman on his way to Indianapolis for a conference and we had ample time to talk as well. We arrived at Charlotte a full three hours late so I watched my flight to Phoenix take off while we sat on the tarmac waiting for a gate. Most of us missed our connections. American Airlines did a great job, though, in re-routing us automatically. My final flight of the day was Dallas-Fort Worth to Reno as a result. I had scrambled to find a quick, take-away breakfast at Newport News, and lunch was a salad picked up on the fly through the Charlotte airport. I looked forward to having enough time to actually sit down at a restaurant in Dallas to eat.
I was placed at a counter in Pappadeaux on C-concourse because my flight was listed as leaving from gate C30. Another woman who lives in Reno sat down beside me and so, once again, I got to share my story with her. We connected in an unusual way through our conversation because we have so many allergies in common. And we had the same flight returning to Reno!
When we were done eating we went our separate ways to prepare for our flight. A few minutes later I arrived at gate C30 to find the waiting area virtually empty and nothing on the board to indicate an upcoming flight. It took me a while to find an agent to look up my flight on the computer and so, at less than five minutes to boarding, I was told I needed to be at gate D34.
If you have ever been to Dallas-Fort Worth, you know that I had to catch the Skylink shuttle to get to D concourse. The stop for my gate-set was the fourth one so it took almost ten minutes to get there. I was so glad to find that my gate was right next to the escalator down and I didn’t have to waste time walking any further down the terminal than that. I made it barely on time for my boarding group number to be called.
It is no coincidence that the flight was initially in C concourse to begin with. If I had gone directly to D concourse, I would have eaten in a different restaurant and would not have met the lady who sat next to me at dinner. But even before the world began, God knew the details of my life, including the divine appointments of each part of my trip last week. How do I know that? The Bible tells me so:
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ according as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love” (Eph. 1:3-4).
“Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner. But be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began” (2 Tim. 1:8-9).
God’s timing and plan for each of us is perfect and the outcomes of every detail in our lives have to do with God’s glory, not our convenience. We have no reason to fret when things don’t go as we expect. Instead, we need to be looking for the blessings God has reserved for us in the perceived plan change.
