It's the basic stuff

8:01 p.m. Today's project was to find a ride to a wedding in San Diego, about 100 miles away.The bride is the daughter of a dear friend, a mutual friend of my daughter and myself as well. Lots of good friends from church are invited, my gift is wrapped and ready, and I've been looking forward to this wedding very much.I would not want to let my good friend down by missing this joining of her daughter to a godly young man. What a privilege it is to be a witness of "what God has brought together!"

I know the Lord will find me a ride with a guest who isn't spending the night, as my daughter and her husband, the wedding party, and many others are; or He will grant me safe travel back and forth, alone. Right now, I do not know how my Friday afternoon journey will turn out, but God does! Psalm 18:28 assures me that there will be an answer to my puzzlement:

For You will light my candle: the LORD will enlighten my darkness. 

It's the basic stuff that I find pops up randomly to remind me that I'm alone, not literally, but in the sense of not having an automatic companion for social events or a long road trip. My close friends are married, and that relationship is their God-ordained priority after relationship with Himself. I have daily conversations, fun with family and those friends, as well as my business, home and ministry commitments to keep me very happily occupied. God is designing a new life for me, and He will not steer me in an adverse or unsatisfying direction.  "All my springs are in You," Psalm 87:7 says.

I think of a widow written about in the book of the Bible by her name, Ruth, who, with her elderly widowed  mother-in-law Naomi, traveled from Moab to Israel, to Naomi's ancestral lands. Ruth needed to earn a living, and found herself gleaning fallen wheat from a kinsman of Naomi's, Boaz. He granted her request to glean in his fields, and even told her not to go to any other field. He commended her for returning with Naomi, and said, in Ruth 2:12,

The LORD recompense your work, and a full reward be given you from the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings you are come to trust.

And that is the key for me, as it has been for 33 years as a believer in Christ, and is especially is now as a widow: TRUST. That means trust in serious matters, such as finances, relationships, business and ministry. But it also means trust in the enjoyable, fun social times God so graciously grants His people.

After all, wasn't Jesus' first miracle (recorded in John Chapter 2) turning water into wine at a wedding?