At first light,God stirred an Alberta Clipper to blow down from Canada across the upper Midwest.
Elizabeth sipped coffee as the TV anchorman reported breaking news about a chemical spill on the other side of town. Great. Just what she didn’t need. Her asthma always flared up around chemicals and lately it had been worse. She didn’t need anything else to go wrong.
God caused the wind to push the brunt of chemicals away from the city.
She didn’t feel well. She rubbed her forehead and wished her headache would go away before she had to leave for work. If her boss weren’t such a tyrant, she would have called in sick. He always made such a big deal about taking off work for medical appointments.
God splashed purple in the sunrise on the eastern horizon, Elizabeth’s favorite color.
Jenny, her friend, said that God loved her and watched over her every day. Yeah right. Jenny was a religious fanatic. A real Jesus freak. If God loved her so much, why did bad things happen? She glanced out the window but didn’t notice the colors in the sky.
God nudged her to take along an extra inhaler.
Elizabeth was half way through the door. She turned back and took the extra inhaler from the cabinet. Better safe than sorry.
God sent an angel to clear traffic.
She kept her windows closed but some fumes still seeped into the car. Luckily, she hit every green light on an otherwise congested street and hurried into the office, holding her breath across the parking lot until she could get into the ventilation system. She joined her co-workers around the break-room TV to watch the evacuations of neighborhoods closer to the accident.
Lucky they had missed the worst of it. Even so, she coughed and felt a wheeze in her lungs. She fumbled for her inhaler, shook it and took a puff. Empty. Lucky that she had remembered the extra one.
God prompted Elizabeth’s regular doctor to take the day off and reminded him of a new doctor in the clinic willing to see extra patients.
Elizabeth struggled through the morning with a headache and heaviness in her chest. It was as if the day would never end. Maybe she needed vitamins.
God prompted her boss to notice how pale Elizabeth looked.
"You don’t look so hot," he said. "Maybe you should see a doctor."
"No, I’m all right."
"I insist." He checked his watch. "Take the rest of the day off and check it out."
God positioned a patrolman to witness a drunk driver drifting into the wrong lane.
Elizabeth heard the siren before she passed the squad car and the blue Chevy pulled over on the median. Strange that a car would be in the middle of the four lane that way.
In the waiting room, Elizabeth read a magazine article by a man who claimed God had rescued him from an airplane crash. "I felt a hand rest on my shoulder and guide me through the smoke and confusion to the exit ramp."
Yeah, right. Jenny closed the magazine and started to put it down when the nurse called her name.
God nudged her to take the magazine with her into the examination room.
Everything was going wrong. She liked her doctor and didn’t especially care to see a different one. While she stewed about this injustice, she paged through the magazine and was reading an article about a new asthma treatment when the doctor walked in.
"What’s the problem?"
"Asthma," Elizabeth said. "I’ve had it all my life but it’s been worse lately. And not good with the extra pollution today."
God directed the doctor to a notation in her chart.
He flipped through her pages and double-checked some lab results.
"Asthma is my specialty," he said and listened to her lungs. He went on to explain the advantages of a more aggressive treatment plan. "You’d be a good candidate."
He suggested the medication she had been reading about in the magazine. As the doctor explained the treatment regimen, she had the opportunity to ask questions about side effects the article had mentioned.
God reminded the doctor about a stash of free samples a salesman had left.
Elizabeth carried her bag of free samples to the car and immediately took her first dose. She felt a little better by the time she reached home. The radio reported the chemical spill was entirely cleared up. Nothing left but a few gouges in the sand alongside the highway. Lucky it all worked out.
God prompted Jenny to phone and remind Elizabeth about the shoe sale at their favorite department store.
After making plans to meet at the store after work the next day, Elizabeth told Jenny about the asthma specialist and the new medication.
"Isn’t it lucky that my regular doctor was out sick?"
"Maybe it wasn’t luck," Jenny said. "God loves to take bad situations and turn them into something good."
"What’s God got to do with it?" Elizabeth said. "He doesn’t even know I exist."
God dropped words into Jenny’s mouth.
"He loves you as if you were the only person in the world."
"There are billions of people on earth."
"He’s big enough to know every one of us. He created us, you know."
"I don’t think so," Elizabeth said. "What’s He ever done for me?"
As she hung up the phone she wondered if Jenny could possibly be right.
God reminded her about the story in the magazine. About her lucky day.
Elizabeth turned off the lights and headed toward bed. She could almost feel a hand on her shoulder.
