How does God work?

Tonight, I manged to finish up my Starbucks paper rough draft for financial statement analysis Then, Troy stopped by for a few minutes and we ended up getting some ice cream from McDonald's.

Last night at the church management team meeting, one of the team members shared a really troubling story. She told us about sending an email to an acquaintance and how this led to just an incredible exchange over dinner one evening. God was truly at work because somehow she emailed the acquaintance out of the blue - right at a pivotal time. While listening to this story, I thought back to some other verses from Colossians 1.

⁹ Be assured that from the first day we heard of you, we haven't stopped praying for you, asking God to give you wise minds and spirits attuned to his will, and so acquire a thorough understanding of the ways in which God works. We pray that you'll live well for the Master, making him proud of you as you work hard in his orchard. As you learn more and more how God works, you will learn how to do your work.

This is how God works. Somehow the team member emailed and set-up a dinner meeting at just the right time in the life of her acquaintance. She was "attuned to his will" as Eugene Peterson translates above. In being attuned to his will, she then knew how to do her work - listen and just be friend - at the dinner table.

When I first read through this passage in January, I thought back to an experience at work from several years ago. The night before a meeting, I knew that a coworker would pretty much be called out during the meeting because of some misunderstandings and communication barriers involving the topic of the meeting. Consequently, I thought about how to divert the meeting back to the problem and away from the person. Sure enough, the next day, we were all sitting around the table and frustrations started shifting directly to my coworker. Somehow, the words were right there to shift the meeting away from the person and back to the problem. The next day the coworker stopped by office and said "thank you." At that moment, I knew with confidence that somehow God was at work in that entire situation. It was a truly amazing sensation.

Good night!