Wild Week

I always ask God to do impressive things so I will have a compelling testimony, and then he does it, and I end up with too much to write about.

I guess there are worse types of frustration I could be dealing with.

Week or two back, I heard from the wife of a blogging friend. Her son was sort of becalmed in life, and he wanted to get in touch with God. It “happened” to be the week my church was putting on a big play and having a 5 a.m. men’s meeting. I took him to the play, he met people who reached out to him, and he decided he wanted to go to the meeting. He also wanted to go to church on Sunday. When I texted his stepdad on Sunday to get him moving, the stepdad “happened” to misunderstand, and he ended up sending the young man AND his mother. Now they’re both going to church, and the young man is part of my prayer group, and he’s a church volunteer.

On that Sunday, I was working security, and someone radioed to tell me a guy was asking to see the pastor and claiming to be a friend of his. I had them send him to me. He turned out to be a Messianic Jew from Israel. His name is Eliron. Just “happened” to be. I lived in Israel for four months. I’ve been around Jewish people all my life. I have connections with other Messianics. And this guy “happened” to get sent to me.

There’s more to it. He knows the pastor’s sister and brother-in-law. He met them in Israel, at a Sukkot celebration. This happened while I was celebrating Sukkot with the Messianics in Boca Raton. Coincidence! He moved to Miami, and for financial reasons, he had to live with his Orthodox dad. One day he was talking to the pastor’s sister, and he told her where he lived. She told him he just “happened” to be five minutes from my church. Yeah, okay. Nothing strange about THAT.

He came to me at a time when I “happened” to be trying to set up a gun range trip with the Messianics. We had been hoping to do it for months. It came together the same week he showed up.

At church, I told him to get my contact info from the pastor so we could hook up. Naturally, it turned out that the pastor didn’t really know him, and he didn’t give him my number. But we “happened” to have a volunteer meeting last week, and at that meeting, a guy who knows a guy who knows Eliron showed up and “happened” to hear me say I was trying to locate Eliron. Fifteen minutes later, I had a text containing Eliron’s number.

We needed to work out a plan for lunch in Boca. I “happened” to invite two friends who are professional chefs. They took care of everything, free of charge. I didn’t have to lift a finger.

We got to Boca and went to the shabbat service, and the speaker “happened” to be Dan Juster, who is practically the Messianic Pope. He mentioned one of his friends by name. “Happens” to be a personal acquaintance of Eliron’s.

We went to lunch after the service, and we had so much fun, we never made it to the gun range. Now we have an excuse to go back.

When we were leaving the service, a lady waved at Eliron in the parking lot, and they started talking. She was an Israeli Messianic. Just “happened” to be there. They talked and exchanged info, so now he has another good contact. I thought this was important, so I shut the truck down and waited. A lady I “happened” to sit in front of in the service came up, asked me my name, and started telling me things she believed God had shown her about me and his plans for me. We invited her to my church, which is about 80% Haitian. “Coincidentally,” it turned out she was from Haiti. So she’s going to come and visit.

Now a former Alvin Ailey dancer at my church is talking about taking a team up to the synagogue, and people from the synagogue want to visit. I don’t know if our church’s leadership will get involved, but it will happen.

I’m hoping to go back to Boca this weekend or next weekend, with more people.

Today I’m enjoying my personal “shabbat.” Life is always nuts on the weekend, so on Monday I decelerate.

I’d like to say I’ll keep posting about all the stuff God does in my life, but the truth is, I’ll be lucky to get 10% of it written.