When you travel as much as the staff at Lifeline does, you encounter plenty of delays and headaches. Flexibility is our rallying cry. Last week I got hit by the “perfect storm” — a hurricane in the east, tornados from the west, and mechanical failures on my re-routed flight in Charlotte. It was clear I wasn’t going to catch the last flight into Haiti.
My team had surprisingly dodged trouble and were on their way, which made matters even worse. They would have to start the next morning’s leadership seminar without me. They didn’t know Haiti. The Haitians didn’t know them. All of our effort seemed headed for disaster. God… why?
Somewhere mid-flight I sensed God’s answer: This is MY seminar, Andy, not yours. While I acknowledged He didn’t need my permission to mess things up, it took me time to actually begin to trust Him.
The next day, I arrived mid-day to see the seminar going well. The Haitians had adapted and bonded nicely with my team. There were double the number of leaders as the previous seminar. No need for me to swoop in to rescue anyone.
Later that week, as we were wrapping up our visit to Haiti, a friend in the U.S. who manages a “prayer warriors” list emailed me. Included in his weekly list of prayer requests was a Cincinnati couple whose new granddaughter, born in Costa Rica, was premature and very sick. While I’d never met those anguished grandparents, I discovered our stories were closely intertwined.
During one of those re-routed flights on my dreadful day of delays and cancellations, I sat next to a bright, young girl from Washington DC. We’d chatted briefly about her new career with a faith-based lobbyist, her roots in my hometown and her destination. She was heading to Costa Rica to be with her sister who had given birth prematurely.
As I stared at that email and pondered the miraculous connection that had been made, the scope of God’s great enterprise hit me. Not only did He have HIS seminar covered in Haiti, but He’d also used that moment to affirm and encourage a fellow Christ-follower along with her anxious parents, whose prayers were being answered days before they’d even asked.
It reminds me how far ahead of us God really is. The gift was God allowing me to look behind the tapestry of His will to see the tangle of circumstances and encounters He works with daily. Maybe now I’ll trust Him with life’s frustrations, delays and wrecked plans. Maybe I can start believing He knows my need BEFORE I pray.
Maybe this kind of thing happens all the time… but we just don’t see it.
written by Andy Sims, Lifeline’s Leadership Development Director
