God Does the Miracle

In 1976, my first year of seminary, I took a part-time position as (get this) Minister of Music and Youth at a small church east of Indianapolis.  Adult choir, led congregational music, played guitar, led youth group, youth choir, visitation.  We drove two hours one way, spent the weekend in a members’ house, worked non-stop, returning home late Sunday night exhausted... but the $75 made it worthwhile.

Then yesterday a bonus payment came in, some 34 years later.  

An email inquired if I’d served at Sugar Creek Baptist.  I replied that I had, and received a note from a woman who was in that church’s youth group.  She wrote, “I always talk about what a blessing and what an impact you had on my life as a teenager."

I don’t remember the woman. I can’t imagine remember what wisdom or great spiritual insight I might have provided at the ripe old age of 22.  I recall organizing a Bicentennial Talent Show, and a trip to an ice cream parlor, and a youth musical (performed to a pre-recorded tape).  

I recall the church was officially located in the town of “Carrolton or Findley.”  That’s what the sign on the edge of town read.  Lore had it that city leaders narrowed the name down to those two, but couldn’t narrow it further, so they used both.  That would be the only thing folk in the town hadn’t decided unequivocally.  Everything else was fairly well nailed down with unwavering certainty.

My end at Sugar Creek came when the pastor asked what I was learning in seminary.  When I mentioned learning about the likelihood of more than one author of the Old Testament book of Isaiah, he began organizing my farewell party.

And yet seeds that fell from a bag I didn’t even know I had at the time grew and bore fruit.  "We are serving the Lord in Indianapolis," said the email.

Life is a mystery.  And God is present in the strangest of places.  And in the end it is not us, but God--the great Mystery of Love, Hope, Purpose, and Peace-- who does the miracle.

Paul wrote of the church in Corinth, “I planted, Apollos watered, but it was God who made the seed grow.”