Like a monkey moment, really

I’ve been trying to look for “God stories” in my days. I’m not one of those superstitious mystics who think things “just happen.” (I’m also not like a former co-worker who railed against superstitious people who believed in all sorts of good luck charms. “Except salt,” she added. “What’s with salt?” I asked. “Well, when you spill salt, you always throw it over your shoulder,” she said. Silly me.)

Anyway, I think God is always up to something and I am often too dense to see it. So I’m trying to pay attention. One day, I got out of the car and nearly locked the door when a sudden thought hit me: Check on monkey. I did. (Did I mention that all my keys are on a keyring headed up by a stuffed monkey. It’s easy to find in my purse and always there.)

Well, it wasn’t in my purse. I was on my way to an all-day conference in Denver and would have come back my locked car in the dark without my keys.

That was a God moment, because I didn’t know monkey wasn’t in my purse. One of the kids did know but that’s another topic. (He hadn’t whispered anything in my ear anyway.)

I want to tell you about yesterday’s God story, however. It’s more exciting than the monkey story anyway. Our family used to do puppet shows. We’d go to nursing homes, AWANA programs, fairs. But that has faded away over the years and now we have several lockers full of unused puppets. We’re shifting gears as a family from the puppets to a new venture with moviemaking. We need a nice movie camera. So several puppets went on eBay.

I was hoping for $200 for the batch. They were used, after all. But they had crept to $300 by yesterday. (I need to add that these puppets were worth close to $900 new.) When the dust settled, we had received well over $450! We were shocked, astonished, and thankful!

Thank you, Lord!