--This is a bit of a twist on the 'Spooky Stories'.
Let's try some "Mysterious Ways"~~~
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---MORE THAN COINCIDENCE~~

-I'd had a long day of teaching psychology. All I wanted to do now that I was home was go in, have dinner with my wife and unwind. But something blocked my front door. A large UPS box, addressed to me. Odd, I didn't order anything. The label said it came from the American Bible Society.

I hefted the box through the door. "Honey, you know anything about this?" She didn't. I cut it open. Well, no surprise--Bibles. A bunch of them. But no bill, no indication of who had ordered them.

The mystery nagged at me even as my wife and I caught each other up on our day. I told her about handing out the midterm grades. After 25 years at the Community College of Southern Nevada, I still enjoyed seeing those nervous looks on my students' faces disappear when they discovered they'd passed. Many of them struggled, either financially or academically; some were on their "second acts" in life. One, a woman in her late thirties, looked absolutely panic-stricken awaiting her grade--afterward, she couldn't contain her joy. "Thank You, Jesus!" she cried out, loud enough to draw laughter from the other students.

"Thank you, Jesus" was the wife of a pastor who'd moved to a rough neighborhood in Las Vegas to plant a church. She was in her first semester in the nursing program, hoping to get a job to help with her family's finances.

The next day, I spied the student in the cafeteria. I pulled up a chair and mentioned my odd delivery. "I don't know what I'm going to do with all those Bibles," I said. The woman's eyes lit up the way they had when she'd learned her midterm grade.

"My husband and I are trying to start a Bible study, but we can't afford Bibles for our new members and folks don't have money to spare," she said.

"How many do you need?" I asked.
"Nineteen," she said.

It would be weeks before an acquaintance finally confessed that she'd "been impressed" to donate the Bible to me, convinced I'd know who to give them to. Why she'd sent 19--exactly 19--she couldn't quite explain. ~~

--Guideposts/JK

--MYSTERIOUS WAYS ~~

---MORE THAN COINCIDENCE ~~

--THERE was a loud knock at the door of the parsonage. Odd. It was a weekday afternoon, not a time people usually dropped by. We didn't have any church activities scheduled. I was the only one there. Probably parishoner. I opened the door without even asking who it was. Standing before me was a stranger, a hulking man, rough around the edges. "Pastor, I need money," he said. "Can I come inside?"

The parsonage was tucked behind the church in a small yard below street level, surrounded by shade trees. "It's a beautiful day," I said. "Why don't you sit at the picnic table and I'll fetch us some cold water? Then we'll talk."

It wasn't uncommon for transients to find their way to historic Union Congregational Church in Buffalo, Wyoming. Our town had only 4,000 residents, but in the Summer and early Fall that number more than doubled.
Buffalo sat at the junction of two busy interstates, in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains. Recent years brought all manner of folks looking for work in the booming natural-gas industry. Local churches had developed a program to refer those in need to the police department, who would check them out before we provided vouchers for room and board.

I came outside with two glasses of water and explained the program. The man grew agitated. "I've been on the road for twenty-five years," he declared, his voice rising. "I'm not going to the cops. I need money, and you're gonna give to me!"

I tried to calm him, but he just got more enraged. No one could see me here behind the church. I didn't have any cash to give the man. Who knew what he'd do to me if I tried to run away?

Suddenly, someone came around the corner of the church. A policeman. I bolted behind him. Moments later, five more officers arrived and subdued the stranger.

"You okay?" my hero asked. "We got a 911 hang-up call from the parsonage."

"Impossible," I said. "I'm the only one here, and I didn't make that call."

-The officer smiled. "Well, pastor, somebody certainly did."

--Guideposts/NB

--MYSTERIOUS WAYS~~

--MORE THAN COINCIDENCE~

-- I wasn't sure why I signed up for that exercise class back in 1973. I was 50 years old, and I'd never taken one before. But the ad in the paper jumped out at me. The class would meet in a local church for eight weeks. It would easily fit into my schedule playing the organ at my church I got an odd feeling that I needed to be there.

"Always stretch first," the instructor began. Stand straight. Bend at the waist and touch the floor. Try to touch with your palms." I groaned and strained to my breaking point, but I did it. The rest of the exercises were a lot more fun. More like dancing than working out. I even asked the instructor for a copy of the music, and for about a year I did the routine religiously at home every day. Until life got a little busy and I tapered off. The music got lost. I forgot most of the steps.

In 1998 I was 75, but not feeling my age. I was still keeping up with the rhythym of life. One morning, I was home alone in the TV room when an idea struck me from out of the blue. 'I wonder if I can still touch the floor with my palms.'

Ridiculous, I thought, but the question persisted. Finally I stood up straight, then bent at the waist. Every muscle screamed, every joint crackled. I pressed on, stretching my palms to the floor. 'Why am I doing this?'I kept thinking.

POP! something bulged out of my thigh. A round mass, hard as a rock. Not painful, but scary. Had I pulled a muscle? Burst a blood vessel?

A specialist diagnosed it: "Soft tissue sarcoma." A cancerous tumor. Apparently, it had been growing behind a muscle. "If you'd found it much later," the doctor said, "You could have lost your leg--or worse."

Today I'm 92 years old, and still on my feet. If you ever visit McCoole's at the Historic Red Lion Inn in downtown Quakertown, Pennsylvania, on a Saturday night, you'll find me at the piano from seven to nine, playing the standards, taking requests. The music keeps me feeling young, but it's that exercise I learned in a church that saved my life.~~
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Guidepost/RB