Mysterious Ways

One of the interesting things about working at GUIDEPOSTS is that the unusual is often part of the day-to-day job. The most popular column in our magazine is Mysterious Ways—inexplicable true accounts of events in people’s lives. We investigate each and every one—and indeed, they are true and miraculous. 

Recently, I had the opportunity to compile a decade’s worth of Mysterious Ways and put them into a volume called (appropriately) His Mysterious Ways. One of the side effects of working with these stories is that I’ve recognized quiet moments in my own life that seem divinely inspired only in retrospect. There are moments when I received a phone call at exactly the right moment to calm my spirit—or when I made a call to a person who was thinking of me. Sometimes it is a feeling of peace that comes over me as if I were being cared for by a loving hand. 

Of course many of the stories in this volume are more exciting—people saved in life-threatening situations, angels who appear in many forms, inexplicable meetings that change the course of a person’s life. 

One of my favorite stories is very practical. A woman’s washing machine quits in the middle of a wash. She was planning to go on vacation and tried to get a repairman to come that day. Here’s what she says:

If only Dad were here now. He could fix anything. But my father had passed away recently. Lord, help me get along without him, I prayed. I then tried one last number.

“I’ll be right over,” the repairman said, once I explained to him how dire my predicament was.

True to his word, he showed up half an hour later. I couldn’t thank him enough for bailing me out.

“I know what it’s like,” he said. “Once, I’d been laid off and we were down to our last dime, with nothing to feed the kids. All morning I drove around town looking for a job. Finally I saw a man working on a fence. He said, ‘If you help me finish this, I’ll give you half the pay.’ Thanks to him, my kids had a good meal that night.”

After the repairman finished his work and the washing machine was running again, he mused, “I always wanted to be able to do something for that man, T. E. Cox.”

“You just did,” I said, amazed. “I’m his daughter.”

Why do I like this one so much? The chances that that repairman would be the one called are pretty unlikely. And then—what are the chances T. E. Cox would come up in the conversation? For me the best thing about this story is it shows a life-changing moment can happen at any time and I can be part of it. God will take care of the rest.

Elizabeth Gold
Editor
GuidepostsBooks

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