Pilot and I were in the living room recently, when I glanced at the ceiling.

“Wilma Flintstone’s on the ceiling,” I said. Pilot put down his book, and looked at me.

“What?”

“Wilma Flintstone’s on the ceiling.”

Okay. I was not eating weird mushrooms. Honestly. I avoid fungi. Pilot moved next to me and held my hand. He looked in my eyes.

“Don’t worry. I’m not crazy. Look.” I pointed to the ceiling. Sure enough. Wilma was staring back.

Our ceiling is textured. While I am sure the person who applied the plaster did not intentionally put Wilma there, there she was, nonetheless.

Once Pilot was convinced I had not crossed over into a land far, far away, we searched our ceiling for other identifiable shapes. Just like you might look for formations in cloud banks. We found a whale. Yogi Bear’s bud, Boo-Boo. Mickey’s friend, Goofy. I saw Barbra Streisand in her permed hair days, but Pilot couldn’t see it, so it didn’t count.

Those swirls and curly-qs have been on our ceiling for decades, but we had never noticed them before. We had to be intentional about finding things we could identify. We had to look for them. How many times does God place things, people, situations, in our path, but we walk right passed them? Oblivious?

It could be someone God wants us to interact with. It could be something He wants us to benefit from being a part of. It could simply be a joy He intends to bless us with. But if we don’t have our eyes open, aren’t looking, watching, expecting, we’ll miss it.

We’ll only see the dust on the ceiling fan, and miss Wilma.

Sometimes we find God’s magnificence unexpectedly. Serendipitously. Like the evening

last month, when I looked up, for no particular reason, and discovered Jupiter cozying up to the Moon. Conjunction, astronomers call it. Serendipity, I call it. We’ll have to wait until 2026 for these two heavenly bodies to be so close again.

While searching for a Rich Mullins video for a past blog post, I stumbled upon this video of him doing the cup game to Screen Door. Way cool. But if I hadn’t had my eyes open, I would have missed it.

Faith without works is like a song you can’t sing. It’s about as useless as a screen door on a submarine.

Keep your eyes open. You never know when serendipity, a happy accident or pleasant surprise; specifically, the accident of finding something good or useful while not specifically searching for it, will happen.

What serendipitous joys have you stumbled upon lately?

I wish you well.

Sandy

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