wedding--my red face

Well, I have to tell this story about myself. Not that I have to, but I want to. Joseph is not renting a tux; so the rest of us get to save that money too. So we had agreed that I would wear my black suit from when I was a mortician. We bought a new pink dress shirt and found a tie from my (father's) collection. We hung these with the suit coat and pants and examined them all together and they looked great. The evening before we left, I finally noticed that the coat from the suit was actually a tuxedo jacket. Upon closer inspection, it did not match the black pants. Plus, it was clearly a tuxedo jacket and no one else would be wearing a tux.

What had happened? The day before I got fired from the funeral home I had picked up this brand new black suit. Since then, I had only worn it a handful of times. It included 2 pairs of pants as well as the coat. Even at a corporate, group rate discount it had cost $300. But now all I had was the extra pair of pants that had never been worn at all. The first pants and the coat were gone.

I knew immediately what had happened. Shortly after we moved to Hood river, our church was collecting clothes to send to pastors in Russia and Ukraine. I had swooped up all my old coats and jackets, stuffed them into a ba and taken them to the donation box at the church. In my haste, I obviously had put that virtually brand new suit along with the others that were almost worn out.

So today, somewhere in Russia or Ukraine, a Christian pastor is wearing a virtually brand new Perry Ellis suit. He might wear that suit the rest of his life as he serves God and the Kingdom of God grows. He will thank God for the "generosity" of an American who donated that suit. God knows it was not generosity but carelessness and haste on my part.

But we thank God that one of his faithful servants will be able to serve him more effectively with this suit. And we thank God that he has provided for us sufficiently that we can go down to the store and get another suit coat that (almost) matches the pants.

Well, "God is in all things working for [His] good\" and the good of the Kingdom of God. And yes, God does indeed work in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.