I had just sat down to work on this newsletter when Jim asked me to run to the store for him.  I was already feeling a day behind with the newsletter.  But Jim needed a few ingredients for a dinner party we’re having tonight.  Anyway, I did have a few checks I needed to deposit at Wells Fargo, so I changed my plans.  I closed my laptop, grabbed the checks and Jim’s shopping list and went out.  The newsletter would have to wait.

I had walked only as far as the corner when I met a man walking toward me with two young boys.  He looked confused and out of breath.  He said, “Do you know where there’s a Wells Fargo bank?”  I said, “I’m going there now.”  He said someone else had pointed him the opposite direction.  I told him that branch had closed a few months ago and now the closest branch was a longer walk the other way.  So we turned around and walked together.

We had a pleasant walk together. When we got to the bank he said he was sure glad for the help.  And I thought, you’ve helped me, too, now I have a story for my newsletter!

What a lovely coincidence to meet someone on the street needing directions to exactly the place you’re already going.  I don’t see anything supernatural about our meeting.  I didn’t see the “hand of God” or anything like that.  But when I do experience a moment of grace, I pay attention.  That’s what I mean when I talk about “the spirit”.  Not something beyond the everyday, but the wonder in the everyday.  Life gives us, randomly, these happy opportunities to help one another, to touch another person’s life, to share a moment of surprise, and delight (as I did with that man, and as I’m doing with you now).  To dismiss these occasions as “just a coincidence” misses the miracles of life: the ordinary miracles of living.