The memorial service was as my friend would have wanted it. Someone made sure of that...

Did you ever have the curious sensation that God was speaking to you? Not out loud, but with some beautiful, out-of-the-way gesture? I had that feeling at a memorial service for my dear octogenarian friend Elisabeth Moore.

This wonderful woman had lost her husband very soon after their wedding and in all the years after that she never remarried. Instead, she dedicated her whole life to caring for people who needed her, especially children whom she liked to pretend she "adopted."

At one point in the service for her, the organ played "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" and as a soloist began to sing, a tiny sparrow flew in through an open window. Three times it circled the church ceiling and then flew out. The sight of it caused my skin to tingle.

To me it seemed that the Lord was using that sparrow to tell us that He too, was well pleased with the lovely Elisabeth. I felt a sense of awe. Only later, talking to one of her "adopted" children, now grown, did I learn that "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" was Elisabeth's favourite song.

But, checking back, we discovered that no one had requested it to be sung: It was just coincidence that the organist had chosen it.

Coincidence?