November 6

My husband and I attended a dinner for the health care system he works for this past        

weekend. Being somewhat of an introvert, I was not anxious to attend the dinner since I

did not know anybody. At the beginning of the evening, a physician in his late forties sat

down next to us. We exchanged information about where we lived and discovered that

this gentleman had graduated from John Hopkins University and that his wife grew up in

Timonium. He told us that he now lived in a small town in central Pennsylvania. We talked about our families, and he then shared that he had a severe heart attack five years ago that changed his life. During this time, he had undergone a profound and sudden revelation of God, which he described as “earth-shaking”.  He proceeded to tell us that he felt called to serve God after this happened. He grew up Catholic but was somewhat skeptical that God was actually present in his life. As he said, he just went through the motions of being a Christian and didn’t really think much about God. After the heart attack, he became very passionate about serving God. One of those ways of serving included prison ministry. He shared that he learned more from ministering to the prisoners then they learned from him. At the present he is in a five year training program to become a deacon in his church. I must admit I did not expect to feel God’s presence at the dinner table that night, but I did. It was a reminder of how God uses people, if only we open our hearts.