Recently God blessed me with the experience of seeing His hand at work. He showed me how He used me to bring some small comfort to one of His brokenhearted children.
Years ago, when I had the disposable income to dispose of on whatever fancies caught my fancy, I bought a CD of songs played on the Dobro (a special guitar frequently used in bluegrass music). I enjoyed listening to the CD a couple of times, but it never really made it into my regular listening rotation. It took its place in my CD collection, appreciated but ignored.
A couple of years later, all my belongings and I relocated from Chicago to southeast Georgia. There I met, fell in love with, and married my beloved husband. A few months later we moved into our current home. Not surprisingly, in all these moves I jettisoned any number of possessions. But the disregarded Dobro CD doggedly followed me from home to home.
Fast forward to earlier this year, when my husband was diagnosed with asthma. That means he's sensitive to dust. This is unfortunate because as a full-time wife, homeschooling mom, and professional musician, dusting (OK, housecleaning) falls to the bottom of my To-Do list. My entire home is covered in a fine (if I'm lucky) layer of dust. As someone once said, you can write in it, just don't write the date.
Anyway, about a month ago my husband began to wheeze a little. I figured that was my cue to give the house a wicked good cleaning. So I declared a field trip day for him and the kids and started in on our bedroom.
In addition to the usual stuff in a bedroom, you'll find that's where we store our CDs, in tall racks along one wall. We have quite a few CDs, and the racks give us easy access to them. They also create a terrific storage place for massive amounts of dust, in hundreds of little individual servings. I had to take each one of the 400 or so CDs down from the rack to dust them. I decided this would be an excellent opportunity to cull the herd, so while dusting, I sorted them into three piles: keep, toss, or "thinkin' 'bout it." The Dobro CD was assigned to the toss pile.
Eventually I got the house cleaned (OK, the truth: I got the bedroom cleaned). The "keeper" CDs were returned to their upright and locked position. I piled the CDs designated as "toss" and "thinkin' 'bout it" on the living room coffee table, figuring I'd decide the fate of the "thinkin'" CDs while comfortably seated on the sofa. Predictably, this task fell just above "dusting" on my To-Do list and those CDs became a large dust-catching pile in the living room.
Then last week I had to call my accountant to answer a business question I had. Now, my accountant is terrific. He's also a nice guy, very smart, very sweet. But though he's both a terrific accountant and a nice guy, we don't really socialize. We usually only see each other around tax time, when we chat and fill out government forms.
Anyway, I called and he answered my question. Then he told me that his wife, who had been ill, had peacefully passed away in his arms four days earlier. We shared his sorrow and my sympathy. He talked for a while about how much he loved her, how much he already missed her. And he mentioned she had loved Dobro music. As I hung up the phone I realized I'd found the perfect new home for my Dobro CD! Luckily, I hadn't thrown it out yet. I dug it out of the dusty coffee table pile and mailed it to him with a condolence card.
Two days later my friend the accountant called me back. Barely able to speak through his tears, he told me how grateful he was to receive the CD, how it reminded him of his beloved wife, and how much joy it brought him to listen to it. He couldn't thank me enough. I was humbled and told him that it was I who was grateful to have a little part of his finding some happiness during this sad time.
As I hung up the phone I reviewed the series of events that had come to pass to bring some solace to my friend. There are those who call it coincidence, but I see it differently. God knew this man would need comforting, so 15 years ago He set into motion His plan to use me for the task. I'm awestruck when I think of all His other plans that I may hold a tiny part in, but will never have the slightest inkling about.
We go through our lives almost never seeing the bigger picture, only concerned with our own individual servings of dust. But there is a plan, and it's much bigger than we can ever conceive of. So when you find yourself wondering whether you have any part to play in God's big picture, remember that Dobro CD, and know that you are an integral piece of His almighty plan.
