Eventual grace: The long path to reconciliation

My mother and her sister (my favorite aunt) recently saw each other across a row of elliptical machines at the local YMCA. After not speaking for almost 20 years, they agreed to meet for coffee. The details of their estrangement are too many and complex to name. Ours has always been a volatile family. We claim generations of unusual behavior—we're a cast of characters both charming and erratic.

When I was a young pastor, I heard Lutheran liturgical scholar Gordon Lathrop say, "You don't have to knock very hard on any door in your parish to find some sort of agony behind that door." That's true for the pastor's door as well.

After more than a decade of prayer, I'd almost given up on my mom and aunt ever getting back together. But there they were meeting at Starbucks one afternoon, and there they now meet faithfully every week, catching up on the lost years. What were they thinking in the gym that day when they agreed to meet? What had God been hatching all these years to set up this reunion?