Recognizing God's Blessings

One would think that it would be easy to distinguish God's blessings in our lives and NOT confuse them for a stroke of misfortune, right?  You're probably scratching your heads wondering what I'm trying to say!  Well, from personal experience, I think it can be surprisingly easy at times to completely miss recognizing God's good hand of providence, if we aren't aren't in the habit of looking for it AND trusting Him with every detail of our lives.  I think I better explain!

For those who have been here in San Carlos over the course of the past season and you will remember that we recently started a new project here at the mission center, a new dorm building along with some staff suites.  It's a two story structure that's still in the basic building stage with the roof of the second story having been poured this past week.

Friday was the day that we were preparing to pour, with the cement truck booked to show up at 8:00am.  Well, wouldn't you know it as I wake up and survey the project to make sure that we are ready at 7:00am that some immense, dark blue clouds are sitting on the horizon in the East.  My Manitoba-prairie raised eyes see one thing:  rain.  Some of you are probably thinking, "Ryan, you live in a DESERT!" And yes, you are right, though we are in our rainy season which typically means that it can rain several inches over the course of two or three months, though it in fact rarely does.  However, seeing as even the possibility of rain and cement work don't mix well together, myself, along with the other workers were gazing up at the sky, asking each other, "Do you think it could possibly rain??"  After some good head scratching and pondering we eventually decided, it just isn't worth messing around, lets just postpone it to another day and so I went to make the call to the company to see about the possibility of waiting another day.  However, the only phone number I had was to the office and there was no one answering at 7:30 in the morning!  After repeated desperate phone calls to no avail, we did the only thing that was left to do: get ready for that cement truck!   All the time I was wondering why of all the days that we decided to pour this roof did it have to look like there was a real threat of rain coming.  And then to top it all off, why could I not even get a hold of anyone to cancel it??

Well, as the morning unfolded, the rain in fact did not come, as threatening as it had looked.  In fact, for most of the pouring we had a beautiful cloud cover and a relatively comfortable morning to pour.  For anyone who's done cement work before (especially if you've done it in the middle of summer, or in Mexico any time of year for that matter) NOT having the hot sun beating down on the project causing it to cure really fast, especially for a bunch of amateur cement workers, was a huge blessing!  

Perhaps it's too much to consider that God put those clouds in the sky for us that morning, but I can't help but think that He does love to bless His children, not just in big ways but in small ways as well.  And His blessing may not be signed with His name like the writing on the wall, but if we are aware of His presence, of His goodness in our lives, and if we trust Him to orchestrate even the smallest details of our lives, He will prove Himself good and faithful and worthy of our trust!