It is extremely hard to see in the moment. We can understand it a little better in hindsight, but only if we look closely. I am not sure we will ever completely understand it on this side of heaven. You see, I believe there are numerous things that happen in our life that I call “Divine Appointments.”

There are those incidents that are beyond comprehension. Someone walked into your life at just the right time. Someone did something at just the right moment that changed your life. Someone said the right word that really helped. Someone stepped up to help and it made all the difference to your life.

Do you know those moments I am talking about?

When my friend was killed in a tragic accident I received a phone call while I was home alone. I was still sleeping on a Sunday morning before I would head out to second service at our Church. My parents were in first service. After getting the word I loaded up and quickly drove to Church to tell them. While there crying uncontrollably in the lobby a young lady put her arm around me and kissed me on the cheek and quietly said, “We love you.” She was the wife of our summer youth intern at the Church and I do not know her name. Apparently she had lost her best friend at college the previous year and was still hurting from her loss. In that moment she felt my pain and comforted me with a kind and understanding word. In less than a month she was back at college with her husband and they were both lost to me forever. But that one kind word carried me through a funeral and through one of the darkest times of my life. Honestly, I like to think of her as God’s messenger sent there just for me.

I believe that was just one of the times that God put everything together in a perfect way to help me in my walk of faith. There have been several times when I could see the hand of God working in my life through a particular person. Each time was an incident in which God did his work through the people he put into my life. I think they were pre-arranged as a divine appointment.

Every time I think about the people the God has sent into my life I have to follow that up by thinking of the people whose lives I have affected. I really don’t have names and stories of all the times I might have been a blessing. Sometimes I don’t know that I have ever filled that role completely, but I hope I did. My final thoughts always have to land on a question, “Who will be thankful for me today?” Into whose life has God placed me to be a blessing today? I may never really know, but I can live today as if each encounter was put together by God and let Him use me in ways I will never fully comprehend.