As he will tell the congregation, he wasn't scrolling through his e-mail, bored up there on the pulpit. The Rev. Dr. Goode was receiving urgent text messages from half a city away, from the First Baptist Church of Paschall, the church of his boyhood, where he is now minister of administration.
On this morning, moments before he delivers his sermon at Zion - "God will speak to you when you least expect it"- Paschall is asking him how to turn the heat off. He is texting back the answer.
He is fluent in both theology and thermostat.
This - knowing his way around the church HVAC system even as he prepares to give the first of two sermons, affirming his sense of being the cog around which order is maintained, of being immersed, of being useful - is what Goode sees as the work of the Lord.
No less providential than the complicated sorrow he experiences driving past Osage Avenue, or the simple grace of people who allow him to move on from what might have paralyzed him, or the earnest requests of people who still ask him for help finding jobs, or the straightforward philanthropy of Goode's nationally acclaimed Amachi program, which matches eager children of incarcerated parents with mentors to help restore their world.
No less heaven-sent than the conquering of his boyhood stutter, the 50-year marriage to a woman he adores, the love of grandchildren he texts daily, or his becoming the city's first black mayor or holding a place in a line of African American leadership that culminates with Barack Obama: All of this, too, is the hand of the Lord.
Redemption, for W. Wilson Goode Sr., is in the details.
