5 years ago Jeff was hired at a church in Eugene, meaning he was no longer available to be the volunteer musician and worship leader at the church I was serving.  I had no idea what to do.  The church was reluctant to pay a musician, and even if we did how would we find the right person in our little town?  I worried and fussed for about a  week until the secretary of the church I had served in Washington called me to let me know that the pianist from that church was moving to Eugene for grad school.  Both she and her husband were amazingly talented and really cool!  We had them over for lunch one day and I talked about the possibilities.  That Fall Lauren started at Valley and working with her again has been one of the delights of my career.  Once you survive a musical Christmas Pageant together anything is possible.

I tell this story sometimes to point out how dumb I can be when it comes to God.  I could not figure out a solution to my problem until it came wrapped on a silver platter of unexpected goodness and blessing.    While we can’t just sit around and expect things to fall in our laps there is a balance of not thinking we have to do everything alone.  I’m sure I’ll post a blog some day about the folks at that end of the extreme who feel like they can just pray away budget deficits or who respond to a request for some help on a project with trite platitudes.  This is my blog post about the ones at what I’ll admit is my end of the spectrum.  The ones who forget that sometimes things do just work out or the unexpected occurs and enriches us in ways we could never imagine.

So now to my latest surprise from God.  Jeff and I have been astounded at the beautiful ways our community is growing and thriving.  We have the delightful problem of being nearly at capacity of our Thursday dinners just 2 1/2 months in to starting them (our max is about 15).  We spent quite a bit of time the week before last talking about the mechanics of how we start another night.  Do we ask some of the Thursday folks to move to a different night?  Do we just start another night and hope people come?  We talked and dreamt and prayed.  We worried and wondered.

Then last week I got a Facebook message from a woman who can’t come on Thursday because of her work commitments.  I checked in with some of our other folks who are hit and miss on Thursday.  Suddenly we have a small group who is ready to go on Sunday nights, so we’ll be launching a second dinner night in August.

Maybe the holy trick to all this is really being open.  If we hadn’t had the conversation about starting a new group I would have responded to the Facebook post in a really different way.  Perhaps these amazing developments only occur when we have eyes to see and a readiness to seize the moment. As people of God we trust that the unexpected or unplanned can work out.  It’s a wild ride sometimes, but the surprises are worth it!

Lauren at Veneta, directing the choir while playing piano.  I told you she was good.