Here Am I - part two

February. We finally moved into our house a couple of weeks before, and we were still wading through boxes as we stepped in the front door. Our new next door neighbor had been attending the church I pastor, and she was also the sister to one of our newest and most active members so we knew each other fairly well.

As she leaves the building after the morning worship service she stops and says "Hey, there is something I want to talk to you about especially with your wife right here." Now, Andrea being in the foyer with me as I greeted people on their way out was not an ordinary thing. Actually, in the seven and a half years I have pastored here, I cannot remember another time she was out there during that time. She is usually chasing our kids trying to keep them from swinging from the balcony. When our neighbor says she wants to talk to us, both of our colons immediately tie into a knot. We both just knew she was going to tell us our kids had wandered over into her yard and did something. "Oh, great," we were thinking "we haven't even lived here a full month yet and we are already making enemies." While these thoughts rage through our minds, my neighbor blurts out "Have you ever thought about becoming a chaplain?" (There goes another knot in the ol' colon.) You see, she works full time with the Army Reserve office, and I had used yet another military illustration in my sermon that morning. The truly remarkable part of this is that Andrea just happened to be standing there with me that day. What do you think....does that sound like a God thing?

Well, of course, I muttered some kind of brush off reply to my neighbor. Andrea, however, was not as easily redirected. This question touched off a conversation that lasted off and on over a week. Come to find out, sometime around last October, God in fact had started speaking to her heart about us and the chaplaincy. (Uh-oh...third knot)

At the end of about a week of talking, we decided that we would pray about it for a while and see what God would do.

Again, it seemed to go away.

That was February...now it is July.