Every day God does small miracles in our lives, but we have to be watching for them to appreciate how special they are.
James 1:17 (NIV) says: "Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."
Here are some of God's perfect gifts he gave me on my visit to the US:
1) I forgot my soccer shoes, but the host family I was staying with in Ohio "happened" to have a pair of almost-new Adidas flats that were just my size! So I was able to play three times while in Ohio!
2) I preached at a church one Sunday and mentioned an amount of money that I needed for a particular project. A woman came up to me after church and said a friend of hers had given her that exact amount of money to give to a charity and so she wrote me a check for the exact amount I needed!
3) My daughter Joy invited me to attend a Philadelphia Orchestra concert featuring Beethoven's 5th symphony at the beautiful Kimmel Center in down-town Philadelphia. I had never been to the Kimmel center so this was a special treat.
I was running late so Joy called me and told me they shut the doors at 7 PM and don't let people in after that. I parked at the first parking garage I saw, which happened to have free "valet" parking. I ran through the streets of Philadelphia like a madman and burst through the door of the Kimmel center where I practically ran over my lovely daughter and her friend who were waiting for me. We hurried up the three flights of stairs and got to the row of seats on my ticket. Three people got up when I showed them my ticket. Joy's friend had a student ticket with no seat number, but I had an adult ticket and Joy also had just purchased a ticket at the box-office at the last minute. When we looked at Joy's ticket, it turned out to me right next to mine, with a vacant seat for her friend on the other side!!! So we got to sit together.
Afterwards, none of us had eaten dinner, but one of the local hotels was offering free "tapas" after the concert. So we went their afterwards and got free food!
4) I saw a friend who I hadn't seen in a long time pop up on Skype. Last time I had talked to him he was doing a graduate degree in Arkansas. I start talking to him and it turns out that he and his wife now live in Philadelphia where she is doing post-graduate work in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. I studied Anthropology at the U of PA back from 1977-1981! He also told me that he was helping people save money on their utility bills, which was the business I had worked in before heading to Haiti in 1998. So I felt I had to go and visit them. It turned out they lived only minutes away from the Kimmel center, so I was able to stay overnight at their house after the Orchestra concert! The next morning I was able to help them out by watching their 5 month old son for a while so they could run an errand. I even remembered how to change a diaper!
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