I almost didn’t go to the meeting that day. It was on the other side of Sydney and I was tired. Yet, I loved the women I knew would be present. They are all very committed Christian leaders from different denominations who are doing amazing things in our city and nation and even internationally. I knew I would come home inspired, so off I went.
After arriving, I chatted with several women sitting nearby and was interested to hear the main speaker, but felt too tired to engage in any deep conversation as we later mingled over lunch. I was happy to stand back and observe, until a friend noticed me and announced: ‘Oh, I was just talking about you and your books yesterday to a friend!’ However tired I was, I couldn’t let an intriguing statement like that go, so enquired further.
It turned out her friend is the librarian at a large Christian school. While chatting at a swimming carnival, my friend had mentioned she knew me. Her librarian friend had then told her they had had trouble getting copies of my books for their library.
If anything is destined to grab my attention, it is a comment like that. You see, while bookstores might run out of copies of my books or decide not to stock them, I always have adequate supplies. How frustrating it is then when I hear that potential customers can’t source them! I therefore hastily asked my friend the librarian’s name so I could contact her and let her know her quest was over.
On arriving home, I decided to email her straight away, despite my tiredness, explaining how my books are available via my website and that I would also be happy to visit her school. I prayed something would come of our contact, but admittedly not with any great confidence.
The next day, I received an urgent email from a minister’s wife from the other side of town. She had chosen to review one of my novels at a women’s breakfast that coming weekend. She had tried to get hold of twenty copies to sell there but the bookstore had sent her the wrong book and had none of the right book in stock anyway. Did I have the copies she needed, she asked.
Later that day, she phoned. I had offered to take the books to her workplace and soon discovered this was at the same school as the librarian whom I had previously emailed.
‘That’s how I knew to contact you,’ she told me. ‘I was telling the staff about my dilemma when the other librarian mentioned your email to her.’
In the end, I was invited to attend the women’s breakfast myself, talk about my own book, then sell them! And I did—nineteen copies of that particular novel, plus a few others. All this came about because I ‘happened’ to go to a meeting I almost backed out of and ‘happened’ to talk with a friend there who had ‘happened’ to speak to her librarian friend who ‘happened’ to be able to tell her colleague I had supplies of my books!
Do you think God had a hand in all this? I do! After all, in Isaiah 55:8-9, God tells us:
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
I’d rather have God’s thoughts and God’s ways any day, wouldn’t you?
Jo-Anne Berthelsen's Blog 