When God Comes Knocking

The Remarkable Ordinary #51: A.J. Augur on the Way God Shows Up in the Random Occurrences of Each Day

Everyone you’ve ever met has a story.

In fact, everyone in your neighborhood does.

Most days when I walk, I’m praying: Jesus, give me Your eyes.

Some days that prayer looks like slowing down enough to notice what my kids notice. The way they drop everything to chase a lizard up a tree. The way they press their faces into a bush, convinced there’s a bird hidden inside. The way curiosity pulls us right up to someone else’s front steps, where a conversation could begin if we let it.

A few months ago, we were eating dinner with the windows wide open, lingering in that in-between space of imagination and ordinary life. We saw someone walk past. Then came a knock at the door.

It was a ten-year-old girl asking, “Can your kids play?”

I remember thinking, God just knocked on our door.

We stepped outside, grabbed scooters, and started doing loops around the neighborhood. Before long, we met her mom. She loved Jesus and carried a story that had clearly been shaped by Him, not once, but over and over again.

Their little girl who had knocked on our door was unexpected. They already had three older children and thought their family was complete.

But then, they discovered they were pregnant. And almost at the exact same time, they made another discovery: her husband was diagnosed with cancer.

Part of his treatment meant he couldn’t touch her. For months, they slept in separate rooms, carrying the fear that even something as simple as his hands could harm their unborn child.

It was a hard, lonely season.

And yet, if you met them now, you wouldn’t guess it. There’s light in her. There’s joy in both of them.

The timing of meeting her wasn’t lost on me. A close friend of mine had just been diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time. I had been carrying that weight, heavy in my heart and soul.

And then, there we were, circling a neighborhood on scooters, listening to a story of someone who had walked through something devastating and still carried joy on the other side.

God meets us like that: in the interruptions; in the unexpected knocks; in the conversations we didn’t plan.

To remind us we’re not alone. To place us, even briefly, in the path of someone who has walked through the dark and found light that held. You never know the kind of people you’re going to meet. You never really know what they’re going through. And that’s part of the adventure, the grand story God asks us to participate in. We’re all beautifully knit together in a web of unseen sufferings that pop out now and again to remind us we’re not so different.

We don’t see this neighbor often. Our lives don’t overlap in big ways. But every so often, her daughter wanders over, and we ride again.

And with each ride, it’s a constant reminder, how often God hides something remarkable inside what looks like just another ordinary day.

Thanks so so so much to AJ Augur for sharing this exceptional story. If you haven’t, please check out her self-titled publication.

The Remarkable Ordinary is a (typically) weekly publication highlighting Christians performing ordinary acts of kindness, hospitality, and integrity. Its goal is to be an anti-moral failure, anti-church scandal, anti-hypocrisy kind of journalism.

For more info on the “why” behind The Remarkable Ordinary, check out this essay.

Have a remarkably ordinary story? Feel free to reach out and send one in to Griffin Gooch’s direct messages!