Serendipity is an expensive sounding word. Any piece of vocabulary with five syllables sounds costly and always seems intriguing. A pleasant surprise or unexpected blessing is serendipitous. Life offers astonishing moments which alter an errant course or changes a faulty outlook.
An entrepreneur John Augustus Sutter, a German born ethnic Swiss immigrant, had established a "fort" in Northern California, a combination of frontier general store, hotel and gathering place for stout-hearted frontiersmen and their families. James Marshall, a New Jersey native who migrated West in the 1840's was hired as a carpenter by Sutter. Marshall was to build a lumber mill to supply needed products for Sutter’s expanding enterprises.
Each morning James Marshall would walk the length of plumes being constructed which would be used to float logs from the hillsides to the mill site. Evening rains frequently washed out the newly dug ditches and Marshall was diligent about maintaining the previous day’s work. One morning Marshall spotted a piece of gleaming metal about the size of a pea. Looking ahead a few feet, he spotted another, and another. Marshall carefully, and secretly, gathered a small mound of the metal and wrapped his find in a bandana. Marshall and Sutter secretly assayed the pea sized ore which proved to be gold. Serendipity! Surprise! Unexpected blessing! The famous gold rush had germinated.
While reading the memoir of a college football fanatic, serendipity happened. The author’s conversations with an aged grandfather are described as, "stories of men reviled and redeemed." The grandfather was the dean of men at a small university in the Texas Panhandle and used his influence to shape young men into God fearing, men who blessed their community. That’s it! Hidden away in a so-so memoire, a serendipitous insight into how one man spent life, redeeming men who were being reviled.
I am surprised with how often God arranges unexpected, undeserved blessing. The God-designed moments come as the Holy Spirit welds the lyrics of a hymn or Gospel song to human spirit. The counsel of a friend interrupts the disastrous course on which one has embarked. An anecdote illustrating a timeless principle surprisingly locks into memory. God’s Word unexpectedly shouts out caution, courage, challenge, and counsel. Without warning, heaven’s wisdom intercepts human folly like a football defensive back appears and snatches away an errant pass.
Ah, serendipitous! Thank God for the wonder of His unexpected, but much needed, blessing.
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