For many years visitors coming home would stare curiously at a corner of the entrance, where they saw an old-fashioned umbrella with a handle looking quite guilty as it faced downwards, twisted and out of shape, “Twisted umbrella handle!” I tell the curious lookers, and grin.
It was a bit of a nasty fall I had that morning, a few years ago. It had been raining all night and yet I decided to go for my morning walk, and so with my umbrella firmly in hand I entered the wet deserted park and started at a brisk pace. I looked up and saw raindrops nestling on evergreen leaves but did not care to notice they had also snuggled in with the mud below and the next moment found myself flying in the air!
It was quite a fall and as I struggled to pick myself up from the slippery muck, I wondered what I had broken and was happy that except for a bruised elbow and slightly twisted hip was none the worse for wear! “Why?” I asked aloud, “had I been allowed to fall? Wasn’t there a God above who was supposed to look after me?”
It was then I noticed my umbrella handle. The thick steel had bent to a full right angle! It looked quite out of shape, and I realized with horror the handle was what had broken my fall and the misshapen steel could well have been my wrist.
“Thank you, Father!” I prayed, “thank you for showing you are always there!”
I wish we could keep mementos of all the major accidents we were saved from, “Don’t repair the bent fender!” we shout, as the driver tries to straighten our car’s bumper after a small scrape with another car, “Why sir?” he cries out, and you know, he doesn’t want to drive around showing that he was not able to avoid an accident, “Because that will always remind us, how we escaped a major accident!” we whisper, “Just imagine, if we’d been in that same space a second earlier? We’d have been smashed to smithereens!”
I know of sons or daughters who come to me looking quite forlorn, “Hey,” I tell them, weren’t you supposed to get married? I remember hearing of your engagement?”
“It’s been broken off!” They tell me looking quite despondent, and to such as them and you with broken fenders and small incidents like this do I want to point my twisted umbrella handle. “It’s a reminder and memory that you were saved from something worse! Your engagement was broken off before worse happened in a marriage.
I’m not sure where that umbrella is now, and maybe that’s why I have to remind myself whenever I have a minor skirmish, that a God above is saying, “Nothing worse happened, because I held you…!”
———————————————–
Would love to hear from you in the COMMENTS section below…and IF YOU WANT TO RECEIVE BOB’S BANTER EVERYDAY, PLEASE SEND YOUR NAME AND WHATSAPP PHONE NO TO [email protected]
————————————————–
ENROLL FOR THE WRITER’s COURSE…
…Get trained to write powerfully by the author, whose article you just read! Don’t wait! Send a thumbs up for details to 9892572883 and let Robert Clements train you in his easy and comfortable way Let the power of WORDS spoken and written effectively and forcefully, change your life! Join the Writer’s and Speaker’s Course, August Batch TODAY! Send a thumbsup to 9892572883 now!
Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and writes a daily column, which has graced the pages of over 60 newspapers and magazines, from a daily column in the Khaleej Times, Dubai, the Morning Star, London, and in nearly every state in India, from The Statesman in Kolkata, to the Kashmir Times in Kashmir to the Trinity Mirror in Chennai.
My heartbroken friend who lost her mother recently,in her sincere way prayed, ‘I am sorry Lord that we do not always remember to thank you for all you do for us.’ She and her mum used to pray together. They both loved each other dearly.At present she’s alone,misses her mom and to feel close to her wears her nighty.But she never questions God’s taking her mother away as her faith is unwavering. ????
Psalm 91. This was the Psalm that saw me through COVID times. I did not even get myself innoculated. N now there’s no need. My God has his Angels around me.