Julie C

I was getting onto a bus at Swiss Cottage one day last summer when I lost my sandals. I managed to trip and fall to my knees as I was getting on, and before I could get up, they’d gone overboard one after the other.

One minute I was wearing them, the next I was standing on the moving bus in bare feet, convulsed with laughter. It seemed like the most ridiculous thing to happen. I could have jumped off to go and get them, but they were a cheap old pair of sandals and it didn’t seem worth it. I marched on up to the top deck, still laughing out loud.

About fifteen minutes later, when the bus was halfway down Baker Street, I heard someone coming up the stairs. I turned to look and there was a complete stranger with my sandals in his hand.

‘Are these yours?’ he said.

I was so shocked I hardly said anything – I just took them from him.

‘What were you going to do without them?’ asked the man.

‘Er, buy another pair on Oxford Street, I suppose,’ I said.

I was still too surprised to ask how on earth he had known where to find the owner of a pair of shoes, fifteen minutes after the shoes were left on a road in central London - or even why he had bothered looking! He went back down the stairs, and got off the bus.

The funny thing is that that morning I had asked God for a personal encounter with him. I’ve been praying for a friend of mine very intensely for a long time, and I wanted some reassurance that God was hearing me. As soon as I saw the stranger with my sandals, I knew that this was the encounter.

After all, if God can take care of my silly sandals, which mean nothing to me, and find them after I’ve lost them right in the middle of London, how much more can he take care of the people I love and pray for?

Jesus said: ‘Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? - Matthew 6:26