Switchbacks, gravel roads, and "Oh, that's why that happened"

 

Your way was through the sea,

Your path through the great waters;

    yet Your footprints were unseen.

                             Psalm 77. 19

 

Four days after graduating from college, I received an unexpected phone call that I had moved off a waiting list and was accepted into a graduate program in journalism. This particular program would enable me to get my master's degree in only a year and be able to live at home to save on expenses.  The classes started in three days.

In the course of those studies, I participated in a three-month internship in Washington DC, designed to provide real-life exposure working for a variety of  daily newspapers and radio stations.  Some of my fellow students were appointed to cover well-known senators, congressmen, the Department of Education, Supreme Court, or report on important social issues.  I pulled the short straw and was assigned for my beat to cover, of all things, energy research.   What in the world?

There was nothing I could do, but put my head down, dig in, and do my best, even though it appeared literally a dead-end task.  I gave myself the pep talk: It's just for three months. Sometimes creativity comes in unlikely packages.

I covered solar energy hearings, wrote articles about natural gas consumption, and produced three-part series on such exciting issues as bike pathways (which were in their infancy), insulating homes, nuclear power plants, and oil pipelines.  Woohoo.  It was a piece of a puzzle I was not sure I would ever use.

I graduated during an economic downturn when very few companies were hiring.  I patched together a series of part-time jobs while I sent out resumes and scanned the meager lists of job opportunities.  Seven months later, a former professor called me about a job opportunity at a construction magazine. 

At the interview, the editor appeared uninterested in this quiet twenty-three year old with no real experience.  As our short-lived conversation was drawing to an end, and I was on the precipice of being dismissed, he asked me if I had anything to show him.  In my shyness, I placed on his desk, a notebook stuffed with newspaper clippings of my articles from my internship.

It was like a huge invisible door opened.  I could see it on his face.  He was suddenly very interested for the first time since I walked into his office.  Because unbeknownst to me, this editor had been looking for someone to cover energy conservation and solar development during the ongoing energy crisis.

All those articles that I saw no reason for being, those dead ends, those unpaved roads, those subjects of "why in the world would anyone be interested in this," actually printed my ticket to a job.  And I had no idea when I was in the midst of doing it.  God was guiding me.  And I was not aware of His divine appointments. No one was more surprised than me.  

Because a lot of what we all do in life is unbeknownst to us in its significance.  Even in what appears difficult, out of left field, or in the most ordinary of days, our assignments are sacred to Him.

There are a lot of things that someday on the Other Side of Life will suddenly come into focus, and we will say out loud, "Oh, that's why that happened."  There is nothing random, but all in His design.  Sometimes it's just part of the training and preparing us for something we don't see coming. There are no outlandish parts when it comes to faithfulness.  Nothing God cannot use in profound ways when we follow Him.  

"Trust Me in this."

 

But it is written,

What no eye has seen,

nor ear heard,

nor the heart of man imagined,

what God has prepared for those

            who love Him.

 

              1 Corinthians 2. 9

              Isaiah 64. 4