Divine Randomness

When I prayed for divine appointments, I wasn’t even sure what I was asking.

We were leaving for a road trip that would take parts of two days before we reached our destination of Black Mountain, North Carolina. The Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers’ Conference would be a large one; I had experienced it before. But this time, I was fighting uncertainty and reluctance. My husband encouraged me to go, so I sent in my registration, paid the fee, and we packed our bags.

To my surprise, the hotel lobby was empty when I went to the desk to register. A few questions revealed that we had come a day early. I had gotten the dates mixed up. Was it my calendar or my forgetful brain?

Initially chagrined, we realized we could relax, do some exploring, and have a bite of lunch.

We drove a short distance to the historic center of this charming little town, looked in some shops, then found an obviously popular place to eat. Drizzling rain started as we left the restaurant, and we were eager to get back to our room for a nap.

But where had we parked our car? It wasn’t where we thought we’d left it.

In a town of 8,500, how lost could it be?

We prayed, then we began trekking all over, looking in lot after lot and asking strangers for guidance. The drizzle was increasing and we were getting wet and weary.

We almost lost hope—were we going to have to go to the police?

Not yet, as it turned out. We asked one more random person, a woman who, upon hearing our story, offered for her husband to drive us around. She was meeting him for lunch. His response was, “Of course! Get in my car!” We protested, but he was in earnest.

Before he even turned the key, he said, “I’m going to pray we find your car.” Then he began re-tracing some of our route. After looking in one or two of the lots, he said, “I think I see one over there.”

“Over there” was a small lot, almost hidden by surrounding shops at a more remote end of town. As we approached, Trent hit the locater button on our fob.

Gloriously, our car’s horn responded.

“Relief” is too tame a word for how we felt. We were more than thankful for this unknown man who had mercy on us. But that was not all. He said, “Before you go, I want to pray for you.”

So, as we sat in his car, he prayed for us, our missionary work, and the conference we came to take part in.

God chose a “random” person and a fellow believer to answer our prayer.

That was just the beginning of divine randomness over the next five days.

At breakfast the following morning, we sat down at a table with some members of the faculty I recognized. Then, realizing this may be a planning meeting, I offered to move. “Oh, no, you’re welcome to be here!” One of them turned to me, found out we were Cru staff, and pounded the table in her excitement. She began pouring out her story. She had been within an hour of being aborted when a Christian woman, a stranger, approached her anxious mother and offered comfort and help in choosing to keep her baby. With renewed hope, the woman did keep her baby—not one, but a surprise of twins! This rescued mother became a Christian and raised her two children, my table partner and her brother, in the faith. Later, this rescued daughter joined Cru staff for many years and is now the co-director of the writers’ conference.

I kept running into Sharon* in the halls of our dorm or waiting in cafeteria lines. The more we shared with each other from our lives, the more she confided. Against the advice of her brother, she married, only to find out early in her marriage that her husband was medically verified as insane. After years of endurance, the marriage was untenable. But Sharon was bubbling over with ideas for her writing and even for mine. Her life continued to hold promise.

Sitting at further meals and in many classes with “random” writers and authors, I continued to hear story after story of intense pain, some of it in various forms of abuse, a freak accident resulting in a severed leg from the thigh down, even an adult son who had committed murder and was consigned to prison for life without bail. Some of their stories left me aghast.

Everyone has pain—which should come as no surprise. And yet: here were men and women who were going on, not bitter or angry or cynical, but using their pain to reflect God’s mercy, help, and goodness. They chose a writers’ conference in order to learn to better express their stories for others who may be going through similar experiences.

I was reminded, again, that God is at work everywhere—in every circumstance, in small troubles (that may just be frustrating and embarrassing like finding a parking lot!) and in extremely difficult and heart-wrenching ones—rescuing and changing lives. Not expunging pain but beautifully redeeming it. Not randomly but divinely purposeful.

Sometimes, to find out where God is at work, all it takes is asking for His divine appointments, not expecting any particular answer. Randomly, if you will.

My prayer was answered, many times over.

*Not her real name.