My daughter, Naomi, has been known to misplace things on occasion—her car keys or wallet, for example. In March 2011 she experienced a scary ride down a winding mountain road. On the way down the mountain it was snowing, and her window kept fogging over. Finally she noticed that her daughters’ school pictures were covering the defrost vent. She got out of the car to remove the envelope. Later, when she stopped at a gas station, she noticed that she couldn’t find her wallet. She called us and asked if we had seen it around our house.
She had been to our place earlier that evening to drop off the girls so that she could work her night shift at the nursing home. My wife, Sylvia, and I looked everywhere, but we couldn’t find her wallet. So she came over to our house to help us search. Then both she and I ransacked her SUV, but we still couldn’t find it.
I prayed that we would find it, but it was nowhere in sight. She then called her husband, Darryl, and told him of her predicament. He told her that he’d look around their house.
I followed her to the gas station and put a few dollars’ worth of gas into her tank. After that she left for work, and I continued to pray about her missing wallet.
On the way to work Naomi suddenly realized the fix she was in. As a diabetic, she has to eat regularly to keep her blood sugar within its normal limits. But she had no money to buy anything during her shift.
“God, You know the fix I’m in,” she said. “Please help me.” At peace about the situation, she drove on to work.
At work one of the aides asked Naomi if she would like a boxed dinner; she’d brought an extra.
“I would,” Naomi answered.
As she ate, she told the coworker about the jam she was in, and how thankful she was for the meal.
Later during the shift the aide came back and set down a stack of coins for the drink machine. “Here, get something to drink,” she said as she pushed the coins Naomi’s way.
Naomi was thirsty and intended to do just that. But the heavy workload that evening prevented her from doing so. Later, noticing the coins in the same place, her friend asked, “What do you like?” She then went and got Naomi a drink. My daughter marveled at how God was taking care of her through the kindness of someone she’d just met.
After Darryl received Naomi’s phone call, he searched the house for the missing wallet. Finally he realized it was getting late and he had to get some sleep before going to work the next day. Before he went to bed he prayed, “God, You know where that wallet is. Please help us find it.”
Normally a problem like that would’ve kept Darryl tossing and turning, but after he said that prayer an indescribable peace came over him, and he went right to sleep.
When he awoke, he looked a bit longer for the wallet, but he eventually had to go to work. As he went out to the truck he had a sure sense that somehow the wallet would be found, but he wasn’t sure just when or how.
Darryl cleaned the snow and ice off the driver’s side of his pickup’s windshield and left for work. Not far down the road he noticed he had neglected to clear off the window on the passenger side. He decided that when he got to the iron gate about a mile from his house he would clear the passenger’s window. But when he stopped to unlock the gate, he forgot to clear off the window.
Noticing his mistake, Darryl, a professional truck driver, berated himself for his absentmindedness. But now he was heading down a snow-covered mountain road with no place to pull over safely.
At the bottom of the mountain, four miles away, he thought about clearing off the window. But the steep incline made him realize that to do so wouldn’t be safe. So he decided to pull out on Max Patch, a graveled mountain road. When it was safe, he stopped the truck and grabbed his ice scraper.
On the snow-covered road something right at his feet attracted his attention. Just sticking up out of the powdery white snow was Naomi’s wallet!
When Darryl returned her wallet, Naomi found her driver’s license, credit cards, and cash right where she had left them. She told Darryl how several times on her trip down the hill she’d had to stop and clear the frost off the windshield because of the blocked defrost vent.
Darryl thought about the four-mile trip down the mountain, and about all the people who’d driven that road during the night. And to think he had picked that precise place to clear the window, after passing two other places.
No wonder the apostle wrote: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6, 7).
