Is this me 30 years ago?

While searching a photo of my mother on the Internet to use in a sermon blog entry, I found an interesting image of a young woman who had the same name as my mother.  I had been quickly overseeing the 30 or so pictures that I could fit onto my computer screen from a Google Images search.

When I came across the photo that surprised me, she looked like a young me.  The hair, the eyes and especially the nose.  Not so much the mouth.  I muttered, “This has to be a relative of my mother’s, she looks so much like me.”

When I clicked onto the photo, I realized it was my niece.  She is a school teacher in Virginia and this was a school photo. If you’ve googled a photo, you realize that you may get more than 10,000 hits.  While her first and last name are the same as my mother’s, we always called her by her middle name.  Yet, without all the artsy frills, I could see myself looking back at me.

Of course, I emailed my niece to confess my confusion and delight in finding her photo.

Occasionally, in the course of our work, we find surprises that amuse and entertain us.  This breaks the effects of a mundane course of the day.

I was reading today an email from a businessman turned minister.  He told about a short period in his life when he had become jealous of his co-workers.  It seemed that everyone was getting promotions, except him.  As the Lord revealed to him his sin, he was skeptical until he opened his own daily email and found that he had written about workplace jealousy.

Writing these daily entries weeks–even months–ahead isn’t unusual.  What is unusual:  Finding that your words which are intended to convict others are being used by the Holy Spirit to bring conviction to you.  The author was amused and happy to accept the correction from the Lord.

Today will stand out in mind as a day that the Lord gave me a delightful surprise by aligning me with my niece’s photo.   I’m always surprised at the thousands of individual ways, the Father has in pleasing, convicting and ministering to us.