Humble themselves, and SEEK my face

I got up and told this story last night as we began our worship time. It is, as usual, most likely more for me than anyone else, but I will share it here nonetheless.

I sold a car yesterday. Hope and I own two cars in Florida - long story - and we decided that we do not WANT to own two cars in Florida anymore. So I listed one of them on Craigslist.com

I must have set the price just right, because within a couple of hours I had ten emails. A few were scams, I'm sure: you seem to get some of those no matter what you list on CL, so I did not go out of my way to respond to any of them. But one guy sent three responses, and he included a cell phone number. So I was getting ready to respond to his email when my phone rang with a Florida area code.

You see, we had tried to sell this same car several months ago, and it had 'for sale' signs posted in a couple of windows, and on those signs were my cell number. Note: at no time did I ever get back to this man with information about where to go see the car, or any other information. It was evident that something unusual had happened here... I answered the call just as I was opening the ad - the man had found the car, and was standing next to it as he dialed.

I realized that in my ad I had mentioned that the car was on campus at Southeastern University in Lakeland, FL - so he had to have gone to the campus and just driven around looking for our car until he found it. Wow - this guy obviously WANTED this car!

The phone call was friendly - he liked the car, had one just like it already and wanted to own twins, and by this time I had sent a text message to our daughter to go out to the car and meet this man with the key. She did, but the battery was dead. The guy ran home - a short distance from the campus - and returned just a very few minutes later with jumper cables. The car was started, and he drove it around a bit. He was 'sold.'

But he tried to ask me to accept a lower price.

Mind you - he had just found the car based on nothing more than a very vague description of it's location and a picture of the back end of it - and he had boldly called the out-of-area phone number he found on the sign, and I was just looking at my email inbox to find that he had sent me three inquiries about the car... This man was by very definition a 'motivated buyer!'

I told him that no, I was very happy with the price I had on the car, and would not be accepting lower offers. I would, though be glad to check in with the other people who had sent me emails asking about the car, and get back to him if none of them panned out.

He finally said that he would run to his bank and return with cash just as fast as he could, if my daughter would be kind enough to meet him back there in fifteen minutes or so.

And he was as good as his promise - we sold him the car on the spot fifteen minutes later, and he drove it away with a huge smile on his face.

So - the question is - do we seek things like that? Or more importantly: do we seek God like that? I have the opportunity to step into God's very presence anywhere, anytime. Do I do so? If I showed half as much desire for God as that man showed for my car, well... you do the math.