Recently I visited Annapolis, Maryland.  It was a brisk February day to say the least!  Downtown Annapolis is a great place to explore, particularly if you like old historic buildings, which I do.  As I went down the street, I saw in between the buildings, this sight…

I had to get a picture; it was an unusual view of a beautiful building, but I am a tad embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know for sure what building it was!

How often does this happen to us?  No, I don’t just mean seeing a building that we don’t recognize, I mean that we walk through life and see little glimpses of things and we aren’t quite certain of what we saw?  Maybe it was an act of kindness, maybe it was an act of malice, maybe it was just sudden…

I recall a few years ago that we had a little controversy in our church because one Sunday the old pews were gone, replaced with new chairs.  Some people were upset because they had grown attached to the pews and thought that chairs weren’t appropriate for church.  Their attitudes mostly changed when they heard the story of the switch:  The chairs were donated to us by a larger church that had outgrown them; they needed newer ones in greater numbers.  Our pews had been donated to a start-up church that had nothing for their people to sit on except for the floor… The pastor of that church had literally cried when he saw what we were giving to his people.

Do you realize what we saw in that instance?  We saw the Holy Spirit at work in His church!  Three churches were growing, one that was larger and more established, one that was medium-sized and beginning to grow, and one that was brand new and poor… Wow, what you see when you stop to notice!

By the way, do you know what building I saw that day through an alleyway?

It was the Maryland State House!