“My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.”- Psalm 139:15
“Don’t look for love, love looks for you.”- Don’t Look for Love (1977), recorded by Jim Post
When Crown of Compassion Ministries was in its developmental stages, my wife Vicki attended a healthcare marketer’s meeting where everyone was invited to put their business cards in a basket for a drawing. One of the prizes was a certificate for legal services from John, an elder law attorney. Vicki’s name was drawn for that prize. She scheduled an appointment with John to rewrite our wills, as they were outdated. At the conclusion of our official business, I shared my plans for the ministry and the web site with John. John’s immediate, heartfelt response was to offer his services to the ministry pro bono.
Although I realized that the ministry eventually would need legal expertise for incorporation and nonprofit status, I was not actively “seeking” John that evening. But John had been “hiding” out there all along. Attentiveness was crucial to embracing this God-ordained opportunity, as Armand Nicholi (The Question of God) explains:
“We may ignore, but we cannot evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with him. He walks everywhere incognito. And incognito is not always easy to penetrate. The real labor is to remember to attend.”
John Ortberg notes that the pain of our ministry downsizing or vocation loss is dual in nature, causing us to (1) wonder where God is- as nothing else can; and (2) open ourselves to God’s presence- as nothing else can. Our uncertainty exacerbates God’s seeming hiddenness. Furthermore, we experience the unsettling sensation of hiding in plain sight of former colleagues and friends. As we emerge from the shadows of isolation, we once again experience our seeking God’s grace, as Frederick Buechner (Listening to Your Life) describes:
“There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always leaving you room to recognize him or not . . . because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
