A rich man impulsively offers a homeless elderly woman and her infant grandchild shelter and is shocked to recognize the pendant she is wearing.
Do you believe in miracles? You should, because they are all around us and they happen every day. Some are small and quiet so you don’t even notice them, others are disguised as coincidences.
John Gregor believes in miracles because he witnessed one, and it transformed his lonely life and brought him everything he’d ever prayed for.
John Gregor grew up in an orphanage after he was abandoned outside a 24-hour drug store in a small town in Minnesota. He was carefully wrapped in a soft baby-blue blanket and around his neck was a pretty little locket.
When they opened the locket they found a note: “Please look after my baby. I don’t want him to suffer. His name is John.” The note was signed “Tessa.”John was handed over to Child Services and was placed in foster care.
After a few years, he was placed in an orphanage, but while so many other children were chosen for adoption, somehow John was never picked by the couples who came looking for a kid to love.
John would sit in a corner, clutching his locket in his hands, and recite the note: “Please look after my baby. I don’t want him to suffer. His name is John.”
He’d whisper to himself: “My mother loved me, she named me and she wanted me to be safe!” That locket and that belief got him through some dark days. and even after he was a grown man, and a successful one, he never took it off.
One day, John was having lunch at a prestigious New York restaurant when he noticed a woman huddled against the restaurant window, trying to shelter herself and the baby in her arms from the snow under the awning.
Coincidences are often miracles in disguise.
John quickly called for the bill, settled up, and walked outside. He walked up to the woman and touched her gently on the shoulder. At his touch she cringed and turned around, raising frightened eyes to his face.
She was older than he had thought, clearly too old to be the baby’s mother. Her face was scored with lines of suffering, and a scar dimpled the left side of her forehead. “Please,” she whispered. “I just want the baby to get warm…”
“It’s alright,” John told her gently. “I’m here to help.” He winced at the disbelief in her eyes. He phoned his housekeeper, Mrs. Mills, and told her to get supplies for a baby and a hot meal ready for the woman, and then called his driver.
John persuaded the woman to get into his car. “The baby will be warm,” he told her. “I really want to help you.” During the drive to his house, the woman watched him, clutching the baby, and John spoke to her soothingly as if she was a child.
When they arrived, John helped her out of the car and opened the front door. When the woman saw the motherly-looking housekeeper, she visibly relaxed and even allowed Mrs. Mills to hold the baby.
A little later, the baby, clean and dry, was suckling sleepily on a bottle of formula while the woman ate a bowl of hot soup. John said gently, “You should take off your coat now, or you’ll be too hot!”
The woman allowed him to help her out of her tatty coat and when she turned around John had a brutal shock. She was wearing a faded pink sweater, and against her breast glinted a locket that was the duplicate of his own.
“That locket!” John gasped. “Where did you get it?”
The woman shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t remember. I had it when they found me.”
“Found you?” John asked. “What do you mean?”
“They found me on the street, beat up,” the woman touched the scar on her forehead. “They say I had brain damage, so I can’t remember anything. They said I’d had a baby recently, but he was gone.”
The woman’s lips trembled. “I lost my baby, and I don’t even know… I only even know my name because of the locket.” The woman opened it and showed John the name engraved inside: “Tessa.”
“That’s why I had to take Faye away…” And Tessa explained to John that she had met and married a good man and had a daughter with him, but he had unfortunately died young.
Her daughter had married a violent man and Tessa had seen him become even more vicious after her granddaughter was born. Tessa had been determined to save little Faye.
She explained with tears in her eyes, “I didn’t save my first baby, but I saved Faye.”
“Tessa,” John said, taking her hands in his. “You did save your first baby! Look!” He pulled out his own locket, opened it, and showed her the precious note. “You saved me, Tessa. and thanks to that, I can now save you and Faye.”
Tessa started weeping as if her heart would break, and John put his arms around his mother for the first time in his life. For John, a miracle had brought him everything he’d ever dreamed of: a family.
John adopted Fay and knew when he looked at Tessa and the baby that there really were miracles, or was it mere coincidence that his long-lost mother had been sheltering outside the restaurant he was eating at?
That’s something we have to decide for ourselves. Is it all random, or is there a loving Hand guiding our steps towards the miracles we need?
What can we learn from this story?
The stranger you help could be someone’s beloved mother, brother, child. John reached out to Tessa and later discovered he’d saved his own mother.
Coincidences are often miracles in disguise. By an incredible series of events, John was at the right place at the right time to save his mother.
