"Do you like Chinese, or do you want to go somewhere else?" our son Greg asked as we were trying to decide where to eat lunch. I said it didn't matter, so as we came upon a Chinese restaurant, he said, "Okay, let's eat here. I'm hungry!"
It was an unassuming little place, tucked in between two other businesses in a strip mall. But when we got inside, it was pure oriental! With the black, lacquered tables, authentic red Chinese lanterns hanging from the ceiling, and the blue-black hair of the courteous wait-staff, I could almost hear the tinkle of Chinese music and imagine I was in the Far East.
Not having an adventurous palate, I wasn't sure what to order, but orange chicken was good. "You've got to try the pot-stickers!" Greg insisted. "And you will love the egg-drop soup." Well, one must have to have an acquired taste for those items, but I was happy to see he enjoyed them.
The check came with traditional fortune cookies, and just for fun I opened them. Mine was rather meaningless, but when Howard asked me to read his, it caused me to exclaim knowingly, "Listen to this! It says, 'You are going to unexpectedly meet someone from the past in a few days,' and I think I know who it is!" I didn't know if he caught on, but it made me think of something that transpired in Sunday school last week.
The subject was answered prayer, and Howard told the story of what he called the most dramatic answer to prayer he'd ever seen. When we were teenagers, our church youth leader, a woman in her mid-thirties, had been married many years but had never had children. She went up for prayer one Sunday, saying she had recently been to the doctor who said she could never have a child.
The pastor and several of the church members gathered around her and prayed for her. Less than a month later, shedding joyful tears, our friend announced she was expecting! We remembered the cute little girl born to the couple, their only child. When we got married and moved away, the blonde toddler was two or three years old.
A couple of days after the Sunday school discussion, the phone rang. It was an old friend from our former home who had attended the church with us back then. She said she heard we were wondering about this lady and her little girl, whom I'll call Suzy. "Suzy owns the Dairy Queen!" she informed me. "She is there most of the time!" I was taken aback, for we had often stopped at the Dairy Queen in our old hometown, possibly being waited on by this now middle-aged woman, the "miracle baby" of the past!
We were told Suzy attended church there with her mother until her own marriage, and our youth leader of former days was a faithful member until her death several years ago. Our meeting should prove interesting, as we indeed encounter someone from the past who is living proof of answered prayer! Something no fortune cookie could have predicted!
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