God and My iPhone
IT WAS NEARING DUSK when I pulled into the parking lot of a Kohl’s Department Store with my two children. I needed to pick something up for them (last-minute) before the night was over. As I found a spot in the midsection of the almost-full lot, the girls and I noticed how dark it was getting, as the stars were starting to array across the sky.
When we made our way into the store, we began to shop around a bit, until about five or 10 minutes later, when I checked my purse for my iPhone to find out what time it was. Swiping my hand across the insides and corners of my purse, then frantically, maneuvering my fingers around everything in it…it wasn’t there. My iPhone was gone!
As anyone who typically, suddenly, loses something valuable does, I retraced my steps, starting with the white floor around me. My girls were amazing and went full-force in search mode! Thinking fast, I blurted out to my daughters, “The car!”
We scurried outside. It was now almost solid dark out, except for a beautiful, hot pink lining in the sky that could be seen afar off for miles and miles. When we reached the car, the three of us quickly did a perimeter check to see if I dropped it on the ground. Nothing. We pulled the handles to open the car door, but I forgot it was locked. That meant I had to look inside my purse…again. While I scrimmaged through my purse, my eyes skimmed the driver’s side seat, hoping maybe I somehow left it there. Still nothing.
Before getting a chance to hit the unlock button on my car key, for some odd reason, I looked a little ways up to the roof of the car, and there it was—strategically placed above my driver’s side door.
How strange. I didn’t put that there. “Who on earth puts their cell phone on top of their car”, I wondered. “Not me.”
The instant I grabbed it from my car’s rooftop, I was startled by a male’s voice behind me, “I put it there. It was on the ground next to your car.” There, sat a man in his late 30s to mid 40s, at the steering wheel in a car next to mine, with the ignition off. He continued, “I’ve been waiting by your car guarding your phone until you came back for it so no one else would take it.”
I thanked the kind man profusely. Without making direct eye contact, he put his hand up as a gesture of saying “you’re welcome”…and that was it. The girls and I walked back into the store and finished our shopping.
It’s been over a year since this transpired, and I still can’t help but ponder, “Who was that man? Where did he come from, as I don’t remember him being there when we parked? How did he know the phone was mine as opposed to someone else’s or someone’s from a car that just left? Why didn’t he just turn it in to customer service since that was the Kohl’s parking lot?”
After I told the story to my husband, he suggested that “it was more than likely an angel.” And I believe the same. But if not, even if that kind gentleman was only just that…a kind gentleman—regardless, God still sent him there (possibly not even knowing why) to bless me. I’ve come to realize that even (what may seem like) the small things to us, matters largely to the Lord. He looks out for His children.
We are alive to declare the works of the Lord! (Psalm 118:17)
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