At Just the Right Moment

I love how the Lord’s fingerprints show up on seemingly insignificant things in my life. Like choosing what book to read. It may seem like a small thing, but it isn’t beyond the realm of His attention!

Here’s kind of how it goes: I know about a book, have generally even heard that it’s a good, or even a great, book. But for some reason, I’m not compelled to pick it up. I have not even a spark of desire. Then later—weeks, months, years later—I think, Wow, I need to read that book. When that happens, I generally whiz through it, marveling all the while at the truth that I wouldn’t have been ready to receive at an earlier date!

My most recent example of this is with a book on the craft of writing. I always try to read one between working on novels. I have a shelf full of titles I read over and over again. But this time I picked up (or rather downloaded!) a book I’d often heard good things about but never read—James Scott Bell’s Plot and Structure. It’s exactly perfect for the stage I find myself in at the moment. In fact, as I am noodling on new storylines and characters, it addresses that very thing I am struggling with!

Of course it isn’t just writing books that expose this phenomenon for me. It occurs with non-fiction books and novels, too. And each time I realize that the title I’d put off reading, or even in some cases shunned, was simply waiting for me to be ready to receive the truth or instruction it had to offer.

Has this ever happened to you? Can you share the title? Maybe it will be the exact one someone else needs to read right now!