God moments

Yesterday Aaron had a chess tournament. I wasn't planning on spending the whole day, I ended up being there the entire afternoon. It wasn't the most thrilling time, but I had a chance to visit with friends. So looking back at my day yesterday, I'm amazed at what God did during this boring afternoon.

It started when a man named Simanta approached me and started asking about Andrew. I'm guessing he is from India or Pakistan, but I didn't ask. He was asking about how Andrew communicates and what kind of things he does in school and on the computer. I explained about Andrew's PODD book and how he can use a switch on the computer accessing with his hand and his head. Simanta was totally familiar with PODD and it turns out that Simanta is Phd professor in the Department of Computer Science at Iowa State University. He is currently working with a 12 year old boy from central Iowa with similar issues to Andrew. He didn't know if what they had would work for Andrew but he wanted me to contact him sometime in the next few weeks. Here is the website he gave me Smart House. I'm sure I will run into Simanta again as we start going to chess tournys again in the fall.

Later in the afternoon I started having a conversation with a woman named Betty in the women's restroom. She asked me if I was Andrew's mom and told me how beautiful he was. And then she started talking about a woman she knew who had cerebral palsy and was completely healed. Immediately my defenses met up. Even as a believer I have trouble when approached by someone who starts talking about healing. She started going on and on about how if I have enough faith and pray hard enough Andrew WILL be healed because God wants everybody to be healed. It's only those who don't have the faith and pray that aren't healed.

Ok, I could majorly get on a soap box here, but I won't. I could have very easily just smiled nodded my head and ignored what she said, or could have just told her off, but I didn't. My response was so totally unlike me and I can only say that it came completely from God.

A few weeks ago I was reading an article about how Jesus had healed the the man by the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-18). This man was one person among many with disabilities lying at this pool and wanting to be healed. Yet Jesus healed only him- and it was not based upon his faith. Jesus chose to heal one person out of many. He could have healed every single one of them but he didn't.

Bottom line is that God has a purpose for everything and we don't know what that purpose is and we don't understand what that purpose is and maybe we never will. ("And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." Romans 8:28) But I do know that each one of us is created in God's own image and that God makes no mistakes. It is only in our eyes that Andrew is imperfect, in our Lord's eyes he is absolutely perfect. So instead of dwelling on what God chooses to do or not to do, I choose to follow him wherever He may lead me.

And that is what I told Betty as her 14 year old daughter stood behind her with a huge grin on her face. Betty thanked me and told me I had given her something to think about. No, God gave her something to think about because those words did not come from me at all.