Was His True Love's Name Writ In Mud?

Got a bad scare Friday.

After Ginny left the house for work, I continued work on that book I’m writing about finding and doing the will of God.

About 9 o’clock the air conditioner repairman, Kyle, arrived to fix our broken unit.

I opened all the house doors and unlocked the back gate so he could get to the inside cooler, the outside unit and have access to the tools in his truck.

When he began work, his cell phone rang and he began an extended conversation with someone while he unscrewed panels from our air conditioner. Kyle had worked on our system a couple of months ago and impressed me with his skill and efficiency.

Since he was occupied with his task, I left him to it and returned to work on my manuscript.

So far, my manuscript runs about 300 pages—mostly of notes and small sections I’ve pre-written over the years. So my work at the moment involves a lot of cutting, pasting, and shifting bits of text here and there.

It’s like assembling a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of short snippets of writing into a coherent flow of ideas. It requires focus.

I focused.

One of my chapters involves various ways people in the past have tried to discern divine guidance for their lives.

For instance, Roger Lowe, an apprentice shopkeeper in Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire, kept a diary between the years 1663 and 1674. A devout Puritan, Lowe, prayed about finding a suitable wife. He courted a young lady named Mary Naylor in an on-again/off-again relationship.

Was she The One?.

On September 24, 1663, a rainy day, he visited Mary. As he walked home, he leaped over a puddle and splashed mud on his clothes.

“When I came home,” Lowe wrote, “There was a direct N and halfe of an M providentially made upon my breeches, plaine to view in any man’s sight made of mire with (my) leapeing”

A sign from God?

The letters M and N spelled out in mud on the seat of his pants.

What else could it mean but Mary Naylor?

“I looked upon it to be from Providence, and fortold somethinge in my aprehension. The smallest of God’s providences should not be past by without observation,” Lowe wrote.

Time went by.

Problems arose.

Roger felt an interest in other girls; Mary attracted the attention of other young men.

On May 11, 1664, Roger records the breakup between him and Mary Naylor—M.N.

He went to her father’s house to visit. “He was from home and I spoke Roughly to Mary and she seemed to be very effectionate, but I little matered it. I cald her a false dissembleinge harted person. She tooke it heinously”.

Later Roger married a young woman by the name of Emma Potter—his diary refers to her by the affectionate diminutive—Emm.

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

M…. humm.

Of course God is not limited. He can direct and guide us by any means He chooses, but I suspect, like Roger Lowe, we often mis-read the signs or see signs where there aren’t any.

In one of the conversations in the Book of Job, Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite, said,

“God is greater than man. Why dost thou strive against Him? for He giveth not account of any of His matters.

“For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not.

“In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; Then He openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, That He may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man. He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword”.

As I focused on cutting, pasting, inserting files into the manuscript body, re-writing snippets, moving blocks of text and…

Suddenly there was a man standing at my elbow!

Scared the breath out of me!

Who the hell was this and how did he get into …

Oh, it was Kyle, the air condition man.

I’d forgotten he was in the house.

I live in my own little world when I’m working.

I’d completely forgotten he was here.

Apparently he’d walked through the room several times going back and forth to his truck and I just had not noticed.

He’d come back in to give me the repair bill.

Now, that was a real scare!