A SERENDIPITOUS GIFT

 While visiting New York City for a few days for Karen’s graduation from One Spirit Interfaith Seminary we had hoped to attend a Broadway play.  The tickets for the shows we wanted to see were quite expensive, but we had heard you could get them for half price at Times Square. After the Graduation Commencement Ceremony and reception, we spoke with the attendant at the Hotel desk about our plans.  He asked when we wanted to see the Broadway production. 

            “Tonight,” we replied.

            “I’m afraid it’s far too late to get half price tickets now,” he said.  “You will have to go directly to the box office, or buy tickets from Ticket Master and pay their markup fee.  If there are tickets left, you will have to pay full price, probably $120 to $150 per ticket.”

Knowing that those prices were out of the question, Karen suggested that we go for a walk through Central Park, instead.  I agreed.  The park was several blocks away.  We enjoyed the sights and sounds of the city and found Central Park to be a delightful patch of lush green and relative quiet.  We strolled along, watching joggers, families with children, and people leading dogs on leashes, as twilight descended.  We came across something like a small stadium where it appeared tickets were being sold.  Upon inquiring we were told that there was a performance of Shakespeare in the Park that night.  Amazingly, the tickets were free!  We found our seats just as the play was beginning.  It was a wonderful performance of Shakepeare’s A Winter’s Tale, in a beautiful outdoor setting.   After the disappointment of not being able to attend a Broadway play, the whole evening, as it played out, seemed like a serendipitous gift from God.

So it often is in life – if we are open to the Spirit’s leading.  Too often, though, we become so intent upon our plans and schedules that we cannot let go.  If our plans our disrupted we become angry or bitter.  We cannot see the grace that comes as a result of our disrupted agendas.  We need to remember that God is always with us, despite appearances to the contrary.  In fact, as we read in Jeremiah 29:11, God has “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

No matter where we are in life, and no matter what the intrusion or the disruption, God is with us.  God was incarnate in Jesus as he walked and taught and lived among us.  The Spirit of the living Christ still touches countless lives today. 

So, if your life is suddenly, unexpectedly disrupted, if your careful plans are scattered to the winds, learn to wait upon the Lord.  Just as the bulbs of spring flowers wait patiently beneath the ground throughout the long, dark winter, so we must learn to wait.  In God’s good time a shift will come and we will find ourselves emerging again into the Light. 

Summer blessings,

Gene