life is a fugue

Yesterday one of our pastors and his wife announced they have decided to take the senior pastor position in a small church in a neighboring town. It is always sad when a well-loved pastor decides to move on. We’re all a little shook, I think. But I loved his story of how it came about.

Ever since they moved to this area about ten years ago, he had loved the look of this particular little church. There was just something about it that fascinated and attracted him. He took any excuse he could to attend. In fact, it became their family’s summer holiday church – when he needed a break from the church in which he pastored (ours).

Then last summer, the pastor of the little church resigned. When Pastor D. heard that, he said he felt a leap inside – yet didn’t know what to do with his feelings. He talked to the head of the district, who told him to pray. The long and short of it is that in the interim he has come to the conviction that this is his next assignment.

I love this story so much, I think, because it’s similar to how I’ve often seen and felt God work in life – mine and others. He has a wonderful way of giving us signposts to alert us to what He might be doing and what might be down the road for us.

For example, when we sensed it was time to move to a different church a few years ago, the church we’d been attending Sunday nights because we loved their praise and worship was our obvious choice. Or, just a few months ago I had noticed J. in the congregation and had the idle thought she would be a wonderful person to meet. Wouldn’t you know it, there she was beside me during the rehearsals for the Christmas production. It can even happen in the biggies, like we fall in love with and eventually marry the person who once lived in our home town. That happened to me. Long before we ever met, my hubby’s family rented my Grandma’s house, and he played in the community band with my dad and brother. We never attended the same school or church in our youth, he went off to Toronto, I to Vancouver. But eventually when we did get together, there was a feeling of rightness about it - partly, I’m sure, because we had so much background in common.

In this way life becomes a fugue in which God transposes notes of our past into our present. If we’re listening we recognize a theme we’ve heard before, though it never repeats note for note but rather the familiar melody is enriched by our present circumstances and our wiser, maturer selves.

I don’t think one can predict the future by watching for these serendipities and fantasizing about how they might turn out. But I often find, on looking back, there were signs along the way which, when I ponder them now, give me a sense that it was all meant to be.