Serendipities

Last night my hus­band and I were at din­ner with our kids and two grand­kids (did I men­tion BLISS?). We were at a Mex­i­can restau­rant that we fre­quent and they have live music on Sun­day nights. Except we’ve never been there on a Sun­day night, so when the band came out in their match­ing mari­achi out­fits with gui­tars, a vio­lin, and a pic­colo trum­pet, our lit­tle two-year-old grandson’s eyes got wide with won­der. I was watch­ing him process it all and it was almost as if you could see the rea­son­ing process happening: 1. This is where they serve food. 2. This is not a place where there’s sup­posed to be a band. 3. But look! There’s a band in the mid­dle of this place. 4. That’s strange. 5. That’s awesome! And when the band made their way over to our table, my grand­son couldn’t believe they were play­ing just for us. He laughed and clapped and promptly put a tip into the big gui­tar. Now, that’s pretty much the term ‘serendip­ity’ in a nutshell—something you never expected that is won­der­ful. Or, as Webster’s Dic­tio­nary puts it “an unex­pected pleasure.” Life is filled with unex­pected things. Some of them are dev­as­tat­ing, and I’m thank­ful that God gives us grace to sur­vive them and the abil­ity to com­fort oth­ers with our expe­ri­ences. But many of them are serendip­i­ties— those unex­pected moments where God shows up like a mari­achi band and brings a party to the table of your life. Those moments where many of us react with a very adult-like, “What’s with the noise? I’m try­ing to enjoy my enchi­lada here.” Lots of us never even look up from our plate. After all, that’s what hap­pens here every Sun­day night. It’s no big deal. I love watch­ing my grand­boys expe­ri­ence the world. It’s fresh. It’s won­der–full. That’s how I want to expe­ri­ence life. Not tired, jaded, been-there-done-that. I want to find (dis­cover) and dance (enter in) and clap (cel­e­brate) and tip (give thanks) every sin­gle day! Isa­iah 43:19 tells us, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not per­ceive it?” The God of Serendip­i­ties is full of sur­prises. Don’t miss ‘em!