God winked today.

By John Stallings

I must admit this isn’t original with me. Juda saw a minister interviewed recently on a Christian T. V show who’s written a book called “When God Winks.” His thesis is; every now & then God throws little surprises at us & even small miracles we weren’t expecting. He calls them “God-Winks.” Juda, who’s currently looking over my shoulder, just informed me that you can go—www. God winks. Com & pull up his website. I haven’t bothered to do that as yet because that’s not the purpose of this blog.

We just returned (and I mean just waked in the door) from a weekend trip. We stopped for lunch at a Cracker Barrel in Ocala & while I sat in a rocking- chair out front waiting for Juda to powder her nose, I noticed a man in my peripheral vision looking at me and about to ask me a question. As I turned toward him he asked—“Arent you John-------? I finished his question by telling him my last name. Long story short-- his wife, daughter & Juda walked out of the restaurant about the same time & we had “old home week.” Turns out they remembered us from a church we’ve ministered at many times. He & has wife & small daughter are no longer there & had moved to a distant city & been wondering for some time how to get in touch with us. God had winked for all of us. He had been trying to locate us but in all candidness we’d forgotten we even had a website & it had inadvertently lapsed from the Internet. Juda had just put it back up a few nights ago so it was no wonder these old friends hadn’t been able to contact us. Our bad!!!

We used the front porch of Cracker Barrel to visit for a while then he asked if we could join hands & pray for his father who had recently been hospitalized after experiencing an aortal aneurysm. Of course we all joined hands & prayed.

I expect to be receiving an email from this wonderful family real soon. As we parted at the restaurant Juda reminded me that we’d given them all our information but had forgotten to ask their name, their email address or much of anything else for that matter.I have a good memory but it's short. Doesn’t that just beat “Johnny-jump-up?” as my grandma used to say?

Who knows how it all will end up but at least our paths crossed with some old friends & wonderful people of God & we were able to unite our hearts in prayer. Maybe, just maybe in God’s long scheme of things, that’s what the whole thing was about. Maybe an old friendship will be reignited or maybe, it was just---one of “God’s winks.”