Has This Ever Happened To You?

While we may struggle greatly with some parts of our faith as Capable Geniuses, there is one time where our brains might give us a sneak peek into His amazing movement through the universe:  The patterns we can see and follow.

Most of us probably have had the experience where the conversation goes something like this:

Them:  What do you want for supper?

Us:  Pork chops are fine.

Then immediately after we say that:

Us:  We need to go to Ireland.

Them: <blank stare>  Where did THAT come from?

Now to them, it looks like our brain is bouncing around like a ping pong ball on drugs.  Actually we just process information, including our own thoughts, so quickly that while they see “Pork chops->Ireland”, what happened was….

“Pork chops are fine.” 

(Which started this train of thought:   Last time we had pork chops was at Bill’s house for the 4^th of July and they were good.  Bill’s wife Nancy invited Beth who brought a cake that was decorated with strawberries and blueberries in a flag pattern.  The cake was good, but I prefer pie.  The show last night showed strawberry streusel and that looked great too.  Streusel is a German dish.  I might want to go to Germany some day and taste authentic streusel, but it would be silly just to travel to Germany—it needs to be a European tour if we go.  We can probably skip France though, I was never that into France.  Maybe a tour of all the countries of our ancestry….Italian, German, Polish….hmmmm….do we tour just one side of the family or both, because this will take a while.  Ok, just mom’s side.  So she is German, English, and Irish.  Oh Ireland is such an incredible sounding place.  Let’s start our trip in Ireland.)

“We need to go to Ireland”

The chain of thought was so instantaneous it looks almost unhinged and random.  In fact, I would not be surprised if oftentimes people think we are random when really we are just super quick…..sort of like the difference between teleporting between cities vs being able to run at the speed of sound to various cities.  Our thought process is not (usually) random, it is actually quite traceable.  But it is often disconcerting or even frightening to those who cannot think that fast.

However, what this means is that our minds are still holding one end of the pattern or thought rope by the time we get to the end of the rope, and we can see the whole pattern of rope…we have not lost track of where we have been along the rope.

This means that we might be uniquely gifted to be able to see the pattern of the Lord throughout our lives and in the lives of others.  We might, with the Holy Spirit prompting us, remember years ago how a casual comment or incident wove its way through our thoughts and lives and hearts and spirits and comes to fruition right now to build our faith.  We may be able to see the pattern of His handiwork, like seeing the entire world in a giant Fibonacci spiral.  We might be the ones who discover the Unifying Theory because we can see the patterns.  He is not random, and there are no coincidences.  We just have to keep our eyes open.

The entirety of existence is such a pattern and we can see Him actively weaving in our lives if we just stop and observe.    It is like suddenly being able to see wifi and cell transmission and radio waves:  seeing such amazing interconnection of the Lord’s work and presence.