Monday, July 02, 2007

Divine Mistakes

Last week, I led a group of 15 missionaries from our district to repair homes in the Biloxi, Mississippi area. We began our week with a devotion from Psalm 4:6 which says, “Many are asking, ‘Who can show us any good?’ Let the light of your face shine upon us, O Lord. Our prayer was that the light of God’s face would shine upon us as we worked and ministered.

On Wednesday of last week, I was feeling pretty good about being an ambassador for Christ. Then it happened. While placing insulation in the attic of a house with our District Superintendent, I misplaced my foot and stepped through the sheetrock in the ceiling. I was immediately sick with disgust. I thought to myself, “here I am trying to help a lady repair her home so that she can move-in by the end of the week and instead of helping, I’ve just caused another problem.”

On Thursday morning, a couple of expert handymen and I went back to the house to repair the hole in the ceiling. While they worked on cutting out a perfect piece of sheetrock to fit into the hole, I talked with the lady who owned the house. She explained that her husband had died shortly before Hurricane Katrina. When Katrina hit, her beautiful home on the coast of Pass Christian was completely demolished. She then showed me a picture of the bulldozers and cranes removing the last remaining pieces of her home. With great sadness, she explained that she had been living in an apartment in Biloxi by herself for the last two years and that she had bought the home we were now working on as an improvement to her living situation.

For the rest of the day, while we waited on sheetrock mud to dry, we did odd jobs around her home. We fixed little things that needed repairing and tried to determine the cause of some electrical problems she had been having. All the while, she talked to us about her life, her family, and her trials over the last two years.

When our work at her home was done and we reflected on the day, a team member stated something I hadn’t yet realized. She said, “Brian, I think God wanted you to step through that ceiling.” You see, without my “mistake,” we would have insulated her house on Wednesday and been on our way to another project. However, my “mistake” had afforded us the opportunity to slow down and listen to the concerns of this dear lady who not only needed a helping hand but a listening ear as well.

Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still and know that I am God. I believe that some mistakes are divine in that they enable us to be still long enough to listen to what God is saying and to see what God is doing. The next time you step through a ceiling you didn’t intend to damage or find yourself off the path you were traveling, take the time to listen and hear the voice of God.

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