My dad, a pastor, frequently travels back to former churches to officiate at weddings or funerals or to serve as a guest speaker. Sometimes in our early morning conversations, he shares updates about people and happenings along his always-interesting encounters. Recently, we got on the topic of the serendipitous steering currents of spirituality – – those seemingly innocent coincidental moments when you realize that divine intervention has put you exactly in the right place at the right time, where long-awaited answers or answers to questions you never asked come when you least expect them.
Throughout his career, Dad collaborated with his own preacher father on a number of sermons, including one about Joseph of Arimathea. He’s recently been going through his files, deciding which hard copies to keep and which to let go. He’d set this one aside, pondering all its possibilities.
Later that same week, he’d returned to a former church for a funeral when a member asked if he remembered that particular sermon on Joseph of Arimathea he’d preached two decades earlier.
“Yes, Charles, ” he answered, “I do remember that sermon. I’ve preached it probably ten times in my career, and it’s interesting you’re mentioning it – I’ve had it on my mind lately to become part of a series I’ll be preaching in the coming weeks.”
Charles paused briefly, then shared, “It changed my life.”
The serendipitous steering currents of spirituality come when we least expect them, whether we’ve searched the clouds looking for answers to burning questions in words written like skywriting from airplanes or whether we never even got as far as asking the question and felt only the gentle nudge that caused us to set aside an idea to return to it later.
And no matter how they establish their presence, we recognize these divine connections and welcome them as guiding lights along the path.
Common Threads 