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Last weekend we were at the Midwest convention in Cincinnati and the theme for us was God’s Providence.
One of the reasons we decided to take all our kids along was that Little Bear Wheeler was going to be there and we wanted the kids to hear him since he’s “retiring” this year. One of the sessions he does is on Providence. To start with he talks about how the meaning has changed. The 1828 dictionary defines providence as “…the care and superintendence which God exercises over his creatures. He that acknowledges a creation and denies a providence, involves himself in a palpable contradiction; for the same power which caused a thing to exist is necessary to continue its existence. Some persons admit a general providence,but deny a particular providence, not considering that a general providence consists of particulars. A belief in divine providence, is a source of great consolation to good men. By divine providence is often understood God himself.” Of course today as you might imagine that definition is not in the dictionary.
His talk was focused on George Washington and how God’s providence allowed him to get his troops safely across the river. There was a bank of fog, a slave who went to the wrong tent to warn the British etc… It was all in response to the prayers of Washington’s troops. I won’t go on to try and retell it because I would get too many of the facts wrong but it’s a neat presentation.
Anyway, maybe a bit less dramatic is our story of God’s providence with our trip to the convention. First off we were able to get all our children (4 of them), boxes with racks for my display (5 of them), more boxes with workbooks (probably about 9 of them), 3 boxes of catalogs, a three drawer unit that contains the novels and the top drawer with all our cash box stuff as well as all our clothes and food for the weekend. You’ve heard of the “clown” car, well this was more of a “clown” van. Suffice it to say that it was “cozy”!
So off we go in our packed van when my husband notices after about 10 minutes that our heat isn’t coming on. I hadn’t noticed that but I don’t take my car very far (mostly grocery, library and bank trips all local) so I wasn’t sure if this was a new problem or not. We can live without a heater so we kept going. About half an hour from home our temperature gage started to creep up. It was just about to hit red when we turned and there was a car repair (God’s providence). They came right out and looked. We were out of anti-freeze which was weird since I just had the oil changed two days before we left, so much for that fluid check that’s included! Putting a pressure gage on they found no leaks so they felt that was the problem and now our heat was working. Yeah.
Okay, so back on the road. It’s running but the heat gage is going from ¼ to ½ and then it will rapidly fall back to ¼, acting strange but not overheating. Well we start to hit some stop and go after about an hour, hour an a half and now it’s climbing real high before dropping. When it’s just about to go into red again we pull over at a gas station with a McDonalds and low and behold across the side road and about 200 ft. back is you guessed it, a car repair (again God’s providence).
This garage looked at it and said it’s a cracked/blown head, not good news. He gave us 4 containers of antifreeze and said if we stop when it starts to heat, let it cool then pour more in we could maybe make it to Cincinnati but he doubted we’d make it home.
Well we started out thinking if we could get to Cincinnati we could ask some of the convention people there about a local garage and get it fixed while we were at the convention. It was not to be. We went maybe 10 miles and it was apparent there was no way. My husband pulled into a Barnes and Nobles to ask about a car rental place. The worker there had no idea but a customer walking by overheard and directed us perfectly (it was only a few blocks away). Our car barely made it to the local Enterprise without overheating (providence again.) And right next to the car rental was a Dairy Queen so we could get the kids some lunch!
When we initially walked in they said they didn’t have any vans available. “Would a car work?” He obviously hadn’t looked out the window at all our kids and stuff packed in! In just minutes they found a van at another office just 10 minutes away and they went and got it for us (providence, again.) Now I was just hoping it was just as big as our so all the stuff would fit!
While waiting for the van we went to Dairy Queen. The kids were thrilled. Taylor our 13 year old was so impressed with his foot long he said, “I wish our Dairy Queen had food.” They do we just never buy it!
Once we got the van everything fit and it was a very nice, the kids wanted to keep it!
We made it to the convention, enjoyed meeting a lot of new people and seeing some repeat customers again. Our kids had fun checking out all the vendors and we took turns taking in some of the workshops.
On the way home we stopped back in Carmel to get a tow truck for our van. While waiting for it we drove the rental to McDonalds and got take out to eat on the grass by our broken van. It took awhile for the tow truck so we also got ice cream from Dairy Queen (my kids always knew they had that!)
We are hoping our AAA will cover the cost of the tow truck since we have trip interruption and it may even cover our meal at dairy queen on the way to Cincinnati. I don’t know if that would be providence or my husbands foresight in purchasing AAA. We seem to get our monies worth! Either way, I’m thankful.
So maybe this doesn’t seem like providence to you? It just seems like good luck or kind of a trivial thing to call providence. I don’t think so. If we don’t look for the hand of God in our everyday lives, even in the little things, we surely will miss it in the big things. What do you think?
Gina
p.s. by the way if you want to check definitions in the 1828 go here
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