Divine Accidents

It has seemed strange to me that for years, sometimes, not always, just sometimes, when someone calls the church office and no one is there to answer it, the call is forwarded to my cell phone. With no  warning, I get a call that looks like is from the church office, I answer, and it is a stranger who was calling the church office and has no idea that he is reaching a personal cell phone of someone. Since it only happened occasionally, I assumed that everyone on staff was on some kind of rotation so that we all received some of the calls. Last week, I asked and found out that no one else gets those calls, only me. NO one confessed to having any knowledge of how this has happened.
So, anyway, I get calls sometimes, I say, "Hello", and after a moment of silence, someone will say, "Uh, is this the church?" and I change into my professional voice and say, "Oh, yes, this is Cottonwood, I'm Jeannette, How can I help you." Then, I answer whatever question the person has.

Last week, I received on of those calls. It was the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday, so I was really surprised to get the call (it turns out MariLea had gone to the bank and set the phone to the recorder). The call turned out to be from a woman who recently began to visit Cottonwood. I met her the first day she came and she said that she felt accepted, she loved being there, and that she usually did not feel wanted in churches. That makes me very sad, but very happy that Cottonwood is the kind of place where everyone is welcome and wanted. The woman was very timid about calling the church, but had a specific need that we could easily help her with. I was so glad that somehow that call came to my cell phone. If she had reached a recorder, I don't think that she would have left a message and this simple need she had would have not been met. Because I was able to answer her call, and make her feel comfortable, her feeling of worth was increased.

This morning, I had another one of those calls. I was in the car and the phone rang. From the caller ID, I assumed it was MariLea calling from the church, but it wasn't. It was a long time member of Cottonwood, calling because she desperately needed to talk to someone. I listened to her, talked with her, and prayed with her. I could tell she felt better after we talked. She told me that she had been very nervous about making the call, and she told herself that if I didn't answer, that would mean she wasn't supposed to call me! O MY! To think that if the church phone had not mysteriously decided to forward the call to me, my friend would have spent the day struggling and hurting.

Thank God that he sometimes chooses to intervene in unusual ways in our lives, and, in my life, He sometimes uses a strange phone system!