May 1, 2025
We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps. ~ Proverbs 16:9 NLT
“What a fortuitous email!” That was the first line of the response I received from the Executive Director of a local agency that addresses shelter needs in our community. I sent an email to the Executive Director to see if they could use any of the furniture that we were giving away as we downsize for our move to Williamsburg. Our need to give away furniture perfectly matched the agency’s need for furniture for a mother and son who would soon move from the Sibert House to a place of their own. They needed and will put to good use everything we needed to eliminate to fit into our new apartment.
Fortuitous? Chance or coincidence? I have come to regard “it just so happens” moments as another name for God. What makes this even more exciting is that “It just so happened” early in 2021, that I attended a Woodstock Ministers’ Association meeting. At the meeting I learned that this agency needed houses and apartments to serve as temporary shelter as they helped people become self-sufficient. I presented the idea to St. Paul’s UCC, the church I served before retiring. After a period of discernment, St. Paul’s voted to transform an empty and in poor repair custodian’s house into temporary shelter for clients of the agency. St. Paul’s needed to find a good use for the house, a need that perfectly matched the agency’s need for a shelter.
Four years later, an email to the agency set things in motion at just the right time. Forty-eight hours later, ten strong people arrived with two trailers and moved everything out in under an hour.
We could not have asked for a better answer to our need. It’s an agency with which we’ve been involved. It is a ministry that is close to my heart. It seems we have closed the circle in a way beyond our control and imagination. We make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.
Grateful and amazed. ~ Anne
Wayfinding 