As Harold took a bite of Bavarian sugar cookie, he finally felt as if everything was going to be ok. Sometimes, when we lose ourselves in fear and despair, in routine and constancy, in hopelessness and tragedy, we can thank God for Bavarian sugar cookies. And, fortunately, when there aren’t any cookies, we can still find reassurance in a familiar hand on our skin, or a kind and loving gesture, or subtle encouragement, or a loving embrace, or an offer of comfort, not to mention hospital gurneys and nose plugs, an uneaten Danish, soft-spoken secrets, and Fender Stratocasters, and maybe the occasional piece of fiction. And we must remember that all these things, the nuances, the anomalies, the subtleties, which we assume only accessorize our days, are effective for a much larger and nobler cause. They are here to save our lives. I know the idea seems strange, but I also know that it just so happens to be true. And, so it was, a wristwatch saved Harold Crick.

Stranger than Fiction

I LOVE this quote because it illuminates the tangible pieces of God in our lives. God lives in and among us in small, life-saving anomalies. I see God in cookies and in a diet coke at just the right moment and in a green light.

The things we sometimes don’t even notice are the building blocks of our lives. We are the route we drive to work, the socks we put on in the morning, and the Splenda we put in our coffee. We’re more than that, sure. But we are that, too. And God is working even within those tiny life-accessories.

JL Gerhardt