Sometimes a simple story can have a profound impact. More than twenty years ago, my friend, Adhiratha, told me about an incident that happened to his uncle and I have never forgotten it. In fact, every time something gets lost, I think of Adhiratha’s uncle and I’ve never even met the guy!
Adhiratha comes from a very religious Catholic family. Just to show you the level of their devotion, at dinnertime, before they began eating, they would take turns reading out a chapter from a book about the lives of saints. Anyway, one hot summer day, Adhiratha’s uncle, Francis, was taking a refreshing swim at Jones Beach, here in Long Island. Suddenly, he noticed that his wedding ring had slipped off his finger into the Atlantic Ocean. He was in shock. However, without a moment’s hesitation, he prayed to St. Anthony, who is the patron saint of missing things, and dove headfirst into the murky water. He touched the bottom, skimmed his hand along the sand and, when he re-surfaced, tears welled up in his eyes. The ring had miraculously slipped back onto his finger!
Adhiratha swears that it is a true story and I take him at his word. I totally believe in the power of prayer. Just this weekend, I heard another story about how a sincere prayer can produce amazing results.
On Saturday, my Hungarian friend, Istvan, and his wife, Agnes, were taking their weekly 4-mile hike through Forest Park. Even though Forest Park is in Queens, it’s easy to forget that it’s in the middle of a big city. Their walk takes them on trails through lush vegetation and beautiful, oxygen-rich woods. After their hour-long hike, they returned to the car only to discover that they had somehow lost the key. Agnes said a quick, fervent prayer to God and then went back to the trails, with Istvan in tow, to try to discover where the missing key had fallen. Istvan was understandably a little reluctant : after all, it was like finding a needle in a haystack.
As they retraced their journey, my friends ran into a couple and asked them if they had, perchance, seen a car key in their travels. The couple replied that they hadn’t. After a fruitless search, Istvan and Agnes finally gave up and headed back to the car. They were resigned to taking a cab home, finding the spare key, and then taking another cab back to Forest Park. It would be expensive and take at least a couple of hours. Just then a hiker came up to them and, waving a key in his left hand, asked, “Did you lose this?” Sure enough, the fellow had bumped into the other couple on the trails and they had told him about the missing key. How or where he found the key still remains a mystery, but Agnes is certain that her prayer had something to do with it. And so am I!
