Serendipitous Unexpecteds from Jesus

 

Beautiful Outlaw is a dangerous book! It has caused me to fall in love with Jesus all over again. I realized in reading it that Jesus is a whole lot different than what I have been told, taught, and believed. He is so refreshingly inviting, masculine, and full of life that my picture of Jesus is forever altered. I want to draw as close to this man and follow Him with everything I am. Only read this book if you are willing to have your entire world shaken to it’s core—in the best possible way you can imagine.

One particular aspect of Jesus as he really is involves his playfulness. That is, he likes to have fun and surprise me with serendipitous types of things/events. This is a new category for me.

Here is one example:

Last weekend, my wife, Sandy and I decided on the spur of the moment at lunch on Friday to drive to Charleston, South Carolina for the weekend. We had no reservations, no place to stay but wanted to go.

We invited Jesus into the weekend and sensed him saying go for it. So we left Atlanta, just beating the traffic jam and drove the 5 hours to Charleston. We arrived just in time to hit the beach for 1 hour at 6:45 pm. I was able to get in a fun session of kitesurfing while Sandy enjoyed the beach. We began at 8:30 pm to look for a place to stay. We invited Jesus into the search.

I called a couple of places and they had no openings-totally booked. We drove past a Hampton Inn and I made a couple of wrong turns but eventually arrived. I walked in and asked the desk clerk if they had any rooms. She replied, “Wow, I just got a cancellation by phone 90 seconds ago. The room is yours. You must have an angel on your shoulder because I have had over 100 calls for rooms today. There are no rooms anywhere as there is in town this weekend American Idol, a huge baseball tournament, and a giant dance contest.” As I said yes, we’ll take the room, another man walked up and asked if they had any rooms. The desk clerk replied, “No, he just took the only one I had.”

I laughed as I told my wife what happened and smiled thinking how the wrong turn in driving to the Hampton Inn actually made it possible for us to get the room. Had I not made the “wrong” turn, I would have arrived at the front desk 2-3 minutes before the cancellation call came in and missed the room.

I sensed Jesus smiling and sort of saying, “See it’s fun following me isn’t it.”

We had a blast the entire weekend. In addition, we were able on Friday night to only get one night’s stay as the entire place was booked on Saturday. No room in the inn type of thing. However, just as we were preparing to check out on Saturday another cancellation came in allowing us to stay in the same room on Saturday as well.  Again the playfulness of Jesus. We smiled and laughed and enjoyed another day of serendipitous unexpecteds from Jesus.

- Reese