The first came for Lilly. Today was her 14th birthday, and she unexpectedly encountered some germs. She celebrated by staying in bed all day with a sinus/ear infection. Yay! She thought she was coming down with something last week during Fiddler. I guess she was. Her birthday wasn’t a total wash, though. We actually celebrated a few weeks ago. She and a bunch of her friends ran around downtown State College (don’t you love small towns?) for a couple of hours on a scavenger hunt. We divided all the girls into 3 teams (one team was sisters and cousin Mackenzie) and sent them out into the streets with a list of over 30 things to acquire, photograph, record, or do. We ended the evening with some delicious Rita’s…and a tie. Yep. With the bonus points and special awards, 2 of the teams ended up scoring the exact same amount. Go figure…
The second unexpected encounter came this evening as a group of about 20 of us gathered outside the State Theatre to prayerwalk downtown. What’s prayerwalking? Pretty simply, it’s praying as you walk around the place that you expect the prayer to be answered. Low-key, non-demonstrative, usually unnoticed. But as we met to talk about the simple structure of the evening’s stroll through the PSU campus, a gentleman passing on the street overheard our friend Mike reading the “tips for praying” sheet. The guy stopped, made some faces that displayed his disagreement with what he was hearing, then said something along the lines of, “What this guy is telling you is wrong. There is no hope. It’s a nice idea, but it’s not real.” He must have thought that Mike (who is 3 weeks into his stint at PSU with the Coalition for Christian Outreach!) was trying to convert us! He didn’t realize that we were all with Mike! We exchanged a few sentences before the guy moved on.
I would have like to have a conversation with the guy. Maybe the Lord will bring our paths to cross again soon. I’d like to hear what he has to say and understand why he doesn’t believe in God/Jesus or prayer.
We had a good night praying around campus, by the way.
Have you had any unexpected encounters lately?
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