God has a really big hat...

Last night, I placed an artist's rendition of a supermassive black hole on my blog. It represented how I felt after finding out I had no place to live, no place to base my job hunting efforts, no place to call home.

Tonight's photo is a picture taken in Antarctica, back in 2003, of a sunrise during a total solar eclipse.

Pretty trippy, huh?

Almost as trippy as the rabbit God appears to have pulled from God's great big hat.

I had literally prayed that God would need to pull a proverbial rabbit out of God's proverbial hat early yesterday evening.

Last night, I spoke with a Tweep on the phone. She had asked me to call her after she read my blog yesterday evening. She is a PC(USA) minister in St. Petersburg, FL. We spoke about my situation and then she told me she had an idea that she and her husband had been thinking about for awhile. The long and short of it is this: She invited me to move down to St. Petersburg to live, find a job, and to participate and involve myself in the work of the church again.

While I will be moving away from Ocala, I will still be in relatively close proximity to my father who is in assisted living near Ocala.

God has a really BIG hat.

By the time we ended our conversation, I had found out that I would be getting to know a number of people in The Presbytery of Tampa Bay , including the new chaplain at Eckerd College and the good folks at The Missio Dei, along with a number of other individuals, including the members of Woodlawn Presbyterian Church in St. Petersburg.

To top it all off, the woman I was staying with handed me $450 dollars this morning.

Cash.

I was in no way expecting that.

She didn't know about my move. I hadn't had a chance to tell her about it yet.

Not only does God have a really big hat, but God has really big rabbits that get pulled out of that hat.

I'll be down there tomorrow evening, beginning my time there with a family dinner. It is a good thing to begin time together with a meal. It is an opportunity for community and communion. A time of peace, wholeness, and shalom.

I want to thank so many people, some whom I know on Twitter, and many whom I will never know or meet, for their prayers last night and for the goodness in their hearts to care for me in this time. And I want to thank everyone who has been reading this blog, both those who have left a comment or two and those who have not.

Most especially, I want to thank the many PC(USA) ministers and church members who have stood with me through this time of trial, and also those who call themselves Outlaw Preachers. Some of those people identify with both of those groups.

I am one of those people. I am a PC(USA) Minister of Word and Sacrament and I am an Outlaw Preacher.

May all of you, each of you, be blessed.

We are children of God, a God who pulls giant rabbits out of a gargantuan hat.

Last night my world looked like a black hole, a bottomless pit so strong and forboding that even light itself could not escape it's bounds. Tonight my world seems like a solar eclipse sunrise over Antarctica. While there is still a black circular disk to consider, it is only an illusion, for the light of the sun is streaming forth from behind the obstructing disc of the cold silent moon and the cold silent moon will pass over soon enough, leaving nothing but the warm illuminating rays of the sun in its stead.

There is still a long way to go, many miles to cross. But the journey is under way.

And like the person in the picture, I am moving toward those far-streaming rays, setting a course for their heart.