{"id":746,"date":"2011-05-30T13:24:42","date_gmt":"2011-05-30T17:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.bottlerockettheology.com\/?p=710"},"modified":"2011-05-30T13:24:42","modified_gmt":"2011-05-30T17:24:42","slug":"providence-he-didnt-walk-by-on-accident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/?p=746","title":{"rendered":"Providence &#8230; He didn&#8217;t walk by on accident &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>First a definition &#8230;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Providence from Dictionary.com (<a title=\"Define providence\" href=\"http:\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/providence\">http:\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/providence<\/a>)1.\u00a0the foreseeing care and guidance of god or nature over the creatures of the earth.\u00a0 2. God, especially when conceived as omnisciently directing the universe and the affairs of humankind with wise benevolence.\u00a0 3. a manifestation of divine care or direction.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">I don&#8217;t pray for a parking spot when I go to the mall, or pray that God will lead me to the spot where I lost my car keys (well, not usually anyways). Okay, maybe sometimes when I am losing it because I can&#8217;t find my glasses and &#8230;\u00a0 You know what that is like.\u00a0 Scary. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">My Bible reading isn&#8217;t directed by letting the Book fall open to a certain page and then closing my eyes and &#8220;finding&#8221; the verse God would have me to read.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">But providence, yes, I do believe in a Sovereign God who oversees care of his creation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Here&#8217;s my story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">A storm moved into our area on Wednesday evening with very damaging winds.\u00a0 More trees and power lines than I had ever seen on the ground.\u00a0 Thankfully no deaths.\u00a0 Our problem was that we would now have no electricity for two days. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Considering what so many people had gone through with tornadoes and flooding over the last several weeks, I was not going to complain.\u00a0 This was not a tragedy but an inconvenience.\u00a0 So we were soldiering on, my wife and I, she&#8217;s a beauty, and waiting for the crews to remove trees and restore power.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">At work Friday I thought that if the electricity was not going to be restored until late Saturday that we might just get out of town for the day.\u00a0 Leave Friday after work and come home Saturday evening. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We were packed and ready to go.\u00a0 I had the car running and was fiddling with my phone to try to find a discount motel rate for the area we planned to travel to.\u00a0 Was starting to frustrate me because I thought I would be able to do this pretty quickly. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">But one thing led to another and we sat in the driveway much longer than intended.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Then providence happened. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">God knew that we would much prefer staying home.\u00a0 A little get-a-way sounded good but financially this was not a good time for that.\u00a0 And we were tired from dealing with our inconvenience.\u00a0 But we really weren&#8217;t complaining.\u00a0 And we weren&#8217;t fervently praying that God would restore things ASAP.\u00a0 We felt very thankful and cared for and didn&#8217;t want to ruin that with amplifying our inconvenience.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">So as I sat in the car with my phone, the Duke Energy truck pulls up and stops in front of our house.\u00a0 The guy gets out and as he walked toward the back of our house to inspect lines says, &#8220;I think we&#8217;ll have your power on later tonight.\u00a0 No promises but it should be later tonight or first thing in the morning.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Providence &#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Not earth-shaking, but pretty good news.\u00a0 We celebrated with turkey burgers and a movie.\u00a0 And you should have heard us when I called home and got the answering machine.\u00a0 (Our way of remotely finding out if the electric was back on.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">We simultaneously let out a whoop of joy.\u00a0 Sounded like our team had just hit the winning basket as time expired.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">God loves us.\u00a0 You, me, everyone.\u00a0 So much so that he sent his only Son on a rescue, a redemption mission that if we only believe he gives us eternal life.\u00a0 That&#8217;s the big stuff he is involved in &#8211; salvation, eternal life, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">But sometimes, he takes time from his busy schedule to &#8220;send the guy by&#8221; with the news that your electric will be back on soon<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">That is the God I serve.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">May you be praised Sovereign Lord. May I always love you.\u00a0 May I always honor you as God and give thanks.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Your servant, David.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First a definition &#8230;&nbsp; Providence from Dictionary.com (http:\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/providence)1.\u00a0the foreseeing care and guidance of god or nature over the creatures of the earth.\u00a0 2. God, especially when conceived as omnisciently directing the universe and the affairs of humankind with wise benevolence.\u00a0 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/?p=746\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3dxA8-c2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}