“The Lord leads us out of evil in a thousand ways, some of them quite mysterious.”Emanuel Swedenborg, Divine Providence 296

 

 

This quote landed in my inbox. A thousand is a substantial number, one that would need to be well integrated into the ordinary moments of my routine to avoid being a glut of rescues in the eleventh hour.

 

On occasion I notice. The other day I almost backed out of a parking space without looking to the right, but only to the left where the traffic was expected to emerge from. Then I glimpsed the colorful scarf of a woman walking by my bumper. Gasp, that was close. 

 

Then there was the time I held my tongue, just barely, when the impulse bubbled up to speak ill of a coworker to our boss. When I see her I still shudder to think I might have marred our friendship. 

 

I would not be able to articulate a hundred such near misses, much less a thousand. But if I swivel the circumstances to the children in my sewing classes, numbers pile up. Each dropped pin that reflects the light enough for me to notice, and pick it up, is one tender foot that won't be pierced. Each instance of intervention when a child starts to snip the air with scissors, just to enjoy the click click click, is a detour from disaster. Whenever I turn the iron off before they arrive, I breathe a little easier. When a beginning sewer asks to make a cardigan, and I suggest flannel pajama bottoms instead, we head toward success rather than tears. If a child pins the pillow with wrong sides together and I remind her to put pretty sides in, she is spared disappointment. If a boy is casual in sewing closed his bean bag, and I know that it will split open at the first toss, I help him make the stitches smaller. 

 

While an explosion of beans or a band aid on your toes is not what I would call evil, it is unwanted. When I can steer children away from such problems, I do. What is more, the children have almost no idea that they have been protected. It is not because I am pulling the wool over their eyes. They just aren't looking for it, which is where the mystery comes in. 

 

It turns out that I am not the first one to act from such intentions.