Today I took a train from Lommel, a Belgian town just across the Dutch border, to Brussels. I was to change trains in Lier, but the Lommel train was behind schedule. I hustled off the train at platform 2, ran under the tracks to platform 1, but was too late to catch the Brussels train. Frustrated and angry, I went into the station to find out when the next Brussels train was. When I got that information, I stomped back to platform 2 to await it. Oh, I was so angry that I had missed that train! I thought of my poor friend in Brussels waiting for me.

Then, when the Brussels train arrived, I walked down the platform to get on it — and there on the concrete platform I saw my prayer rope. It was the same rope that I had given to my sister when she was suffering with cancer. I don’t know if she ever prayed it or not, but she kept it at her bedside, and her husband gave it to me after she died. It’s the only relic I have of her … and it fell out of my pocket after I exited that first train.

If that train had been on time, and I would have made my connection, I would have lost my sister’s prayer rope forever, and it would have broken my heart. But that did not happen. I missed the train, and therefore recovered this treasure.

I wonder how often things like this happen to us, and we don’t see it, we only simmer in anger at mistakes and missed opportunities.