god's mailing list.

If you haven't figured out yet that I've picked a church, let me spell it out for you: I-V-E F-O-U-N...you get the idea. I guess I decided one Sunday morning when I overslept and hadn't planned on a specific church the night before, so I found myself back at Harmony Grove, the only church I'd really liked. And I was tired of looking. When I went back, the people recognized me, and they were glad I came back. So I kept going.

The real deciding factor for Harmony Grove was the mail. Churches always want you to sign the register with your name, address, phone number, etc. so they can send out the church hounds, I mean, postcards. We can probably all agree that churches want you to come back, though why it is they want you back may be open for discussion. I always wrote down my name and simply "Lewisville, NC" as my address. There are over 8000 people who could put "Lewisville, NC," so I didn't figure I was giving anything away. The truth is, being sent a postcard or getting a phone call from the pastor probably wasn't going to change my mind about a church.

Or so I thought.

Two days after my first visit to Harmony Grove, I received an inspirational postcard - generic pastoral-type picture with a Bible verse with a generic y'all-come-back-now-ya-hear message on the back. It was mailed to me at simply "Lewisville, NC." Written off to the side was my building and apartment number in a different ink - the mail carrier. How was it possible that the postcard made it to me? True, my last name isn't that common, but I just moved here. Does the church have an agent at the post office? Is the Lewisville branch of the United States Post Service just that good? "Through wind, rain, sleet, snow and incomplete addresses..."

I told my mother, a rural mail carrier, about it, and she was equally amazed. I've seen letters with the wrong house number on the right street get delivered, but a letter sans the street entirely? Even in a small town, it is not the post office's job to fill in the blanks of addresses. You know, I've been hearing that God works in mysterious ways for a long time now, but never have I seen Him use a stamp.

Now here I am, proved wrong by thinking that a church's outreach committee wasn't going to change my mind. And if I hadn't been so very Sandra about the whole thing and just put my address, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. I would've chucked the postcard after a cursory glance, and I surely wouldn't have stuck it on my fridge.

So now I go to the church that sent me mail. You could say I took it as a sign. I'm not saying that God made sure I got the postcard because my life will be drastically changed by my regular attendance at Harmony Grove. Could be. I make no promises on knowing God's plans, though I am apparently somehow on His mailing list. More than likely, He's just having a good laugh about it. He knows I think I'm pretty smart, and yet here I am, totally thrown by a generic religious postcard. Mysterious ways, indeed.