Divine Appointments

“Love is the duty of the present moment.”   ~~Jean Pierre de Caussade

 “No Matter what else we may have planned, love is our duty. ‘Who is my neighbor?’ I ask.  Jesus answers; ‘The person in need I am sending your way.’”  ~~David Roper, O.D.B

   These quotes are about divine appointments.  We never know when or where they will come. God works in the deep unsearchable places in our hearts and in the universe. He has a plan for everything.  He wants to use you. He wants to keep you prepared. Are you prepared?
     Here is how you will know if you are prepared; you have your day planned, but so does God. What if these plans don’t line up? If God sends delays like; losing your car keys, hitting every red light or being behind Grandma Moses who is doing at least 10 m.p.h below the speed limit, how do you react?
    If you’ve spent time with Him in the morning as a start to your day and asked for His power and presence to fill you up and strengthen you, then it is certain you will behave in a completely different way than if you had ran out of the house in a hurry, forgetting to even say ‘Good Morning’ to Him. If you are surrendered to Him you will have peace. Not only that; you will be relaxed in the situation, and maybe even excited. What is He about to do?
    “Who is my neighbor?” Who is He sending my way? Only He knows. But nothing happens by accident in God’s economy. All the times I have spent fuming about delays and unhappy over a day’s plans lost are just shameful to me. If you have tried to turn right and He sent you left, there is a reason….You are about to meet your neighbor!
     Maybe you are supposed to offer aid. Maybe Grandma Moses made it to the grocery store and cannot reach the toilet paper on the top shelf. Maybe someone just needs a listening ear, or even a kind smile. And sometimes, oh, sometimes, we get to actually tell someone about the love of Christ and His sacrifice for us on the cross. But of course, that is only by a very special divine appointment.
   Don’t try to force God’s hand. Let Him play it out and you will walk in perfect peace. He has the most wonderful plans for you; exciting adventures and stories to tell at the end of the day about what He has done through your simple willingness. Your willingness to let Him rearrange your schedule is all He asks. He will do the rest.
   Are you ever out in public, say, at a store or the bank or another place of business, and you just see someone that draws you? They pull at your spirit and it could be for a hundred different reasons;  but you absolutely know you need to speak to them or do something for them. You can ignore it. It is the easiest thing to do. I have done it so many times to my regret. I have thought so often; ‘why didn’t I just go do this or that for that person’? I missed my divine appointment. I lost out! Now another one of His children will be called upon, will feel the prompt. But I won’t get the blessing. Too bad, so sad! God never forces our hand.
     God’s motto was “be prepared” WAY before the Boy Scouts borrowed it! Get ready! Get ready to meet your neighbor because you can never see the divine appointments coming--- Jesus is like that. Reading the Gospels shows me; He always made time for divine appointments. It didn’t matter how impatient his disciples became He made the time to reach out, to love, to comfort, to heal, to help, because He is love.
    It is not about doing great things for God, but about being available to let Him do even the smallest things through you. Is it possible to keep these divine appointments in our own strength? Absolutely not, but a surrendered child of God is a force to be reckoned with! How exciting is a day of detours?  Who knows what He will do? That is divine!

Tonya Willman ©2010