Why yes, you can judge a book by it's cover.

(Forewarning: this is not a "yay me!" post... but I just have to share at how funny God is.)

3 years ago, a friend of mine and I were getting ready to start a new Bible Study with some friends.  After some dinner downtown and dessert at Midtown, we found ourselves looking through all of the Bible Study book section at The Masters Loft.  Now, unless you know specifically what topic you'd like to study, those sections feel quite ridiculous.  "Study for Relationships"  "Study for Women"  "Study for Women in Relationships" "Study for Women's Relationships"... Puh-lease.

So, as T and I found ourselves elbow-deep in these book choices... we stumbled upon this gem:

Hmmm... that looked interesting.  So we read the back cover, it sounded good, and we bought it.

One week into the study, I knew I'd met my match.  Those of you who know me know that at this point in my life, I developed a wee bit of a crush on Jen Hatmaker.  Those of you who don't know me need to know this: I still do.  In fact, it's been joked that I might even stalk her.  What-evs.

We finished this book, threw in a couple different studies after (a good ol' Beth Moore, Search for Significance...) and decided, "randomly", on the way home from a beach trip to pick up Jen's newest book.  This is how I remember the discussion--

L- on her iPhone: "Hey, it says here that Jen has a new book out... it's sounds like it's dead on to what we've been talking about... about how God interrupted Jen's life..."

The rest of us: "Cool." "Sounds good."  "Let's do it."

There, in the second holy moment, we chose a book... because the write up sounded good.

Then... bizarre things happened.  

• We loved the book.  
• So we made our husbands read it. 
•  And one of our husbands was on our church staff and offered it to our church to do as a church-wide study.  
• And after that one was over, some of us offered to re-teach it in case someone hadn't been able to do it previously.
• And two people showed up at that subsequent study who were ready to have their lives Interrupted.
• And they started praying about how God was going to interrupt their lives.
• And 14 months later, they are getting ready to pack up their entire lives and MOVE TO AFRICA.

Tonight, I had the privilege of sitting in their home as they shared with family and friends the entire story of how God wooed them to Africa.  Part of their story was that God spoke to them when they read Interrupted.... which, clearly, God would have brought into their lives somehow... but tonight, we giggled when we realized that possibly he used us judging a book ....

 by it's cover to get to this one. 

Next stop?

God's funny like that.