Divine Networker

Being a global-minded person, I enjoy thinking about my global-minded God. My new favorite name for God is “Divine Networker”. I’ve seen him delight me with random meet-ups across cultures and boarders… divine-encounters so incredible, that only a Divine Networker could have arranged them. Here are a few favorite examples…

Scoping out Seattle

A couple of years ago I traveled to Seattle to meet up with some friends I grew up with in East Asia. My flight home was delayed 8 hours, so I decided to hop on the train and explore the city. I was downtown somewhere on my cell phone trying to meet up with my friend from Hawaii & Kazakhstan (who I met in St. Louis) and as I crossed a busy intersection, I noticed a particular Asian face. Now, for anyone who’s been to Seattle, you know that there are many Asian faces, but at that precise moment, I was crossing the street and saw a guy who looked like a classmate of mine from Taiwan (there are about 60 of us scattered across the globe). “Eric!?” I exclaimed. “Rachel!?” He responded. And there, on a busy corner of the great city of Seattle, I had a mini reunion with Eric from Taiwan and my friend Kendrick from Hawaii & Kazakhstan.

Just to keep things exciting, back at my gate for my rescheduled flight that evening, I was engaged in a wonderful faith conversation with a man from Nigeria when I happened to look around the departure hall and notice a familiar face. “Wingnut!?” I said in surprise. “Rain!?” He responded. This was my old friend from camp counseling days in Santa Cruz (we went by camp names) on his way to speak in the school of Astronomy at Stanford. No big deal…. just 2 “chance” run-ins in one day!

Just visiting Japan

Today I’m sitting in the San Francisco airport grabbing fish tacos en route from Boise, ID to Redding, CA. (Hopefully my flight won’t get delayed this time, but if it does, I might meet someone famous.) As I’m taking my first tasty bite of red snapper with fresh onions and avocado sauce, I get a Line message from a friend from Hawaii. Line is a chat-app my Japanese friends use. My friend Able from Big Island is in Japan for a few weeks (along with my other friend & colleague Brennan) and is using Line to chat free with friends back at home. He says, “Guess who we met!?” I’m like, “My aunt!?” And he’s like “Yes!” So here it is Saturday evening in California and my friend is in Tokyo going to church with my aunt! Ha! At first I wasn’t that surprised, but then I was like, Tokyo is a big city and my aunt goes to a big church. The fact that my friends went to THAT church and sat close enough to my aunt to meet her is incredible. So there we go again, the Divine Networker delighting us with his delightful ability to make my friend meet my aunt on their trip to Japan! (My Aunt was born and raised in Japan and has lived there most of her life doing international business.)