It Seemed Almost Impossible....
Several years ago, my family rented a condo at Ocean City, MD. One day as we were packing up our gear to head down for a day at the beach, I slipped the only key to our condo unit in the pocket of my bathing suit. My wife noticed this and cautioned me to make sure I removed it before entering the water. I didn’t give it much thought and we proceeded on down to the beach.
After relaxing in the hot sun for an hour or so, I figured it was time to cool off, and grabbed a boogie board and headed into the surf. It was only after I’d been splashing around in the waves for quite some time that I suddenly remembered that key in my pocket – and the precautionary words from my wife. I quickly checked my pocket. My heart sank when I discovered it empty. At the time I didn’t know which was worse: losing the key or having to tell my wife!
I slowly waded out of the surf and walked up to her sitting on the beach reading a book. I sheepishly told her the bad news. Her reaction surprised me. Although she initially gave me that look that all husbands know too well, she calmly got up and started walking down the beach, not saying a word. I was left standing there, dripping wet, not knowing what to do.
It then struck me that she was praying, and I figured if I knew what was good for me, I should join her in that work. So, I turned around and began praying as well.
I began by declaring that with God, divine Mind, nothing can be lost – all His ideas are complete, in their rightful place, and never outside of His control or outside His Kingdom. That included me, the key, the surf, the fish in the sea, each speck of sand, and everything that could possibly be represented in the ocean. This divine Mind knows His ideas, and He knows where and how they are at every moment. And they are in their right place.
As I was praying, I found myself walking back into the surf and just standing in the waves as they crashed around me. I was tempted to peer into the surf and feel around on the bottom with my bare feet to see if I might come across the key. Humanly the odds were beyond astronomical: the surf was rough from an earlier nor’easter, and this was a gold key, on a yellow plastic key fob, mixed in with millions of broken sea shells, in golden sand. I knew it was ridiculous to search for it this way, so I stopped. I humbly turned my thought back to God, and reaffirmed His harmonious and wise control of His creation, and meekly said, “Not my will, but Thine be done”.
As I stepped to one side to brace myself for a wave, I felt something unusual under my foot. I reached down and pulled up the key. I was ecstatic! I bounded back up to tell my wife the good news.
What stood out to me about this demonstration of God’s control of His universe were two things: First, my wife didn’t condemn me, but immediately began praying. That was important and helped free my thought from self-condemnation as well. The second was when I gave up trying to solve the problem humanly (by searching for the key) to totally surrendering my thought to God, and realizing that whether I found the key or not really didn’t matter, because I knew God had the right solution and I was willing to listen for His answer. That’s what made this so special!
Richard Albins
Crossville, Tennessee