Reporting a 'God sighting'

The pastor at our home church in Brighton issued a specific challenge one spring in the mid-'90s as part of a "50-Day Adventure" Bible study series. Participants were to diligently watch for and record "God sightings" throughout the week and report them to their small group at weekly meetings. It was an excellent exercise, fine-tuning our eyes to see the hand of God at work in our most ordinary of days.

Some "sightings" were more spectacular than others. Lisa, at 15, had one of the more extraordinary sightings. She was in a classmate's truck, on her way to pick up her friend Sharon for school at the time of her sighting. She had left that morning without her lunch money, and I almost called her back, but stopped myself, knowing she would just stop by my office, a block from school at the appointed hour and pick up her money then.

Trains were a common sight in Brighton as a main north/south artery went through town, paralleling U.S. Highway 85 and crossing every east/west lane of traffic from Denver north to the state line. We pretty much just made train traffic a part of our daily commute to work, school and shopping, factoring it in when determining our estimated times of departure and arrival.

So common was the sight of the trains that neither Lisa nor the young man driving that morning took any notice of the train paralleling their northbound route to the cross street that would lead them to Sharon's door. Even turning east onto the intersecting county road they failed to see the locomotive bearing down on them.

Finally, catching sight of the train out of the corner of her eye, Lisa let out a yell. A quick reaction by the driver, who slammed on the brakes and depressed the clutch pedal at the same time, allowed the train to barely clip the front of the small pickup, sending it off in a ricochet to stop safely several yards back the way they had come.

The engineer dutifully brought his behemoth to a full stop and came running back down the track, dread filling his heart. How relieved he was to see that there wasn't so much as a scratch on the either of the young people, and the truck itself had sustained only a slight amount of damage.

Emergency personnel were quickly dispatched and accident reports dutifully filled out.

The first I heard of it, however, was when Lisa appeared at my desk, a little earlier than usual, calmly asking, "You know how we're supposed to keep track of our 'God-sightings,' Mom?" I nodded, intent on some mundane task before me, as she continued, "Well, I had mine this morning when I didn't get killed by the train."

That got my attention.

Sometimes our God-sightings are quite spectacular, but most of the time, they're so subtle that if we're not careful, we miss them.

How grateful I was when I answered the alarm summons Tuesday morning and was rewarded by a lightning flash in the night sky. Rain has been so rare, and a good thunder-boomer rarer still that I felt privileged to be awake and aware when the blessed moisture came to replenish our parched land. That too was a God-sighting. And it more than made up for the dust storm that kept everyone inside on an otherwise beautiful Sunday afternoon. I hope you didn't miss the rain, or more importantly, that the rain didn't miss you.

Memory is the gift God gives us to build confidence in ourselves and faith in him. God-sightings, large and small, are all part and parcel of my memories, and even in the distant memories of dark days filled with injustice, I can now see his hand, molding and shaping a heart that is willing to be used.

Sharing our God-sightings with similarly sighted people adds their memories to ours and strengthens even more the faith that sustains us.

Even the old stories of generations past serve that same purpose and I am able to say today with confidence, that God has handled all of my yesterdays, I am confident he can be trusted with tomorrow.

Take note of your own God-sightings today. I promise you'll see one. Maybe it won't involve anything as spectacular as a locomotive, but that won't make the sighting itself any less spectacular.

Look back into your yesterdays. Can you see, as Joseph did, the hand of God on every moment?

"You intended it to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what i now being done, the saving of many lives." Genesis 50:20 (NIV)

-- Dawn Cribbs will be on vacation next week, still faithfully recording a myriad of God-sightings.