The man
beside you adjusts his seat. Across the
intersection a woman uses her mirror to apply the final coats of makeup. To the right, a nicely dressed young woman
talks with intensity on her cell phone.
“Looks important; must be a high-powered business executive closing a
deal or checking her stocks,” you think to yourself, “or maybe she is just
ordering take-out.”
To the
left, you hear something like the sound of repeated cannon fire. Looking, you notice a teen bobbing his head
to the rhythm of the bass echoing through the streets. “Was I really that young when I started
driving?” You ponder in amazement, forgetting
the amount of time passed since your sixteenth birthday. “At least we had good music back
then,” you conclude with a gleam of nostalgia in your eyes. In your mirror you notice the frazzled woman
behind you checking her hair, talking on the cell phone, writing vigorous
notes, searching through her purse, and hushing the screaming children in the
backseat; you offer a prayer, “Lord, help her.”
The light
shifts back to green. You drive on,
never giving another thought to the people you examined at the
intersection. I wonder what would have
happened if you just drove through the light, never stopping to notice the
people at the crossroads. Is your life
somehow different because of the encounter you experienced? Did you learn something about yourself in what you observed in another? Were the lives of the others impacted because
you stopped?
I sometimes
ask myself, how detailed is God? Does He
orchestrate the timing of those intersection encounters? In a store, does God choose the checkout line
for us, ordaining that our lives intersect with another’s in a significant way? Did God choose our neighbors and co-workers;
does He arrange who we pass by on the street?
Is my mail carrier or paper deliverer appointed by God to my house?
I am not trying to solve the age-old debate of predestination vs. free will, but what if
those moments in time where our lives intersect with others truly are
prearranged by God? I imagine our
conversations would transform into something more meaningful, our attitudes
would shift from impatience to serenity when the cashier orders a price check
for the person in front of us, and criticism would give way to
intercession. Perhaps we would speak
more boldly, or maybe serve more humbly.
What if God
is that detailed in His plan! Perhaps
life at the intersection can have significance.
