Readers may recall the column about my sister discovering a metal-framed photograph of our late mother, inexplicably perched on her grown daughter’s patio deck railing in Little Rock on Memorial Day evening. That photograph was a copy of the one I keep on my bedroom dresser.
At the suggestion of a reader who responded to that piece, I’ve since read When God Winks at You: How God Speaks Directly to You Through the Power of Coincidence, by Squire Rushnell.
Rushnell is a former network TV president and CEO. His compelling book is filled with astounding events in people’s lives.
He writes of Mavis Jackson, who for years passed by Anaheim’s Crystal Cathedral, always vowing to stop, until one Sunday she did, seating herself anonymously in the middle of the 3,000-seat megachurch. Standing up and waiting for the crowd to thin afterwards, she spoke with the much-younger woman who’d been sitting beside her during the service.
Mavis asked if she was from the area. The woman told her she’d come from the Midwest hoping to find her birth mother. Mavis said she could relate since, many years earlier, she’d had to give up her own daughter for adoption.
The younger woman asked if Mavis recalled her daughter’s birthday. Mavis answered cautiously, saying it had been on October 30.
That’s my birthday, the woman gasped.
They both reclaimed their seats as the woman said that friends back in her Midwest town had told her that heading to Southern California in hopes of finding her birth mother was a futile journey, although eventually she was told by someone that it was believed that her mother had moved to Orange County.
So on Mavis’ first Sunday at the Crystal Cathedral not only did she and her daughter wind up side-by-side in the vast church but had the instinct to strike up such a revealing conversation.
Another “Godwink” story recounts that on a plane from Denver to Sarasota, Stasia Kelly was remembering the final phone call the night before with her father, the world famous, sad-faced clown Emmett Kelly, also known as Weary Willie. Now she was reflecting on how suddenly he was gone.
The only newspaper photograph ever published of Emmett smiling had been snapped by a UPI photographer decades earlier on the joyful day of Stasia’s birth.
She carried that age-yellowed story and accompanying picture in her lap. Stasia began to weep, and the man who’d been seated beside her asked if she was all right. She told him of her father’s death, pointing to the story and famous photograph of his smile.The man was beyond startled.
“I’m Frank Beatty. The UPI photographer,” he said. A sense of peace settled through Stasia. She understood that her father was providing comfort. Five years later, Beatty took the pictures for Stasia’s wedding.
Then there’s the divine wink to Ken Gaub, a minister traveling America in two motor homes with his family. He was deeply pondering his own purpose in life when the family decided to stop at an exit. Ken chose to walk as the others visited a diner. He strolled by a phone booth just as the phone rang. Ken decided to answer.
The operator said she had a person-to-person call for “Ken Gaub.” He thought he had to be on a prank TV show. “Is this Ken Gaub?” the operator persisted. “Yes,” he answered, still in confused disbelief.
The caller was a woman who said she’d seen him on TV and was writing a suicide note when the telephone number to reach him just “came into” her mind. He spent 10 minutes talking her out of suicide, then tried to make any sense of what had just happened. “What are the astronomical odds?” he later asked.
I was equally fascinated by the wink to Daniel Heard, who lost his beloved daughter Danielle in a car crash when she was 19. Danielle always loved drawing smiley faces on everything.
Nine months later as Daniel stood, still grieving, on his home’s deck on a cloudy night, he asked for a sign that Danielle was okay.
Suddenly, the clouds separated enough for the full moon to appear. He stared up and realized the craters looked exactly like eyes. Then, in slow motion, a slender cloud drifted past the lower half of the moon, paused there and turned its edges upward. It remained that way for about 20 seconds in a perfect smiley face like those his daughter had drawn.
Three months later, Daniel was cleaning up construction debris on property Danielle had suggested forthe family’s new home. His mind turned yet again to his daughter and again he wept. Spying a final scrap of castoff siding, he turned it over and was stunned to find “Hi,Dad” scratched into the back.
This deeply personal winking occurs more frequently than most recipients discuss publicly. Rushnell also believes God often uses others as unwitting messengers to deliver his winks, saying: “We can all become deliverers of goodness to others without the slightest clue God is using us in that way.”
If you’ve experienced your own remarkable Godwink and feel like sharing, send me an email. You’re also invited to visit my website and peruse the intriguing category, “Cosmic Dust.” -
———◊-
———
Mike Masterson’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at mikemastersonsmessenger.com.
Editorial, Pages 17 on 07/20/2013