The lost ticket

April 13, 2007

By Shirley Keyser

My husband, Ron, and I were going to Africa to teach in a Bible college for four years. We were finally packed, with a couple of weeks left for goodbyes.

I traveled from Eugene, Ore., to Seattle to see my father. I planned to use a free standby airline ticket from there to St. Louis, where we had a new grandchild. I was bracing myself for the long separation.

Ron started his drive to New Mexico to say goodbye to his mother. We had each packed a suitcase for our separate trips.

In Seattle, I checked to be sure I had my ticket to Missouri. It wasn’t in my suitcase where I thought it would be. It wasn’t in my purse or coat. What had I done with it? If I had accidentally put into Ron’s bag, I had no way to contact him the days he was on the road.

Our belongings had been put into long-term storage, and the four 72-pound boxes we were taking by plane to Africa had been placed in the back of a pickup in Eugene. I called to tell our daughter in St. Louis the disappointing news.

Opening my eyes the next morning, my first thought was, The ticket — gone. I prayed, “Lord, You can see where that ticket is right now. If it is Your will for me to fly to St. Louis … well … it’s up to You.”

I sensed God speaking to my heart very distinctly: The ticket is in Eugene, in a brown briefcase in one of the boxes in the pickup. The words were so specific. Believing God, I told my father, who was not yet a believer, what I felt the Lord was telling me.

It was a cold, November Sunday morning, but my sister-in-law, Ilah, agreed to climb into the back of the pickup, open the big boxes and look for a brown briefcase with a ticket in it. Ilah told me later she prayed, “Lord, which of the four boxes should I look in first?” She chose one, took the rope off it, and cut the tape.

Ilah phoned to say she had found a thin brown case, but there was no ticket in it. It was time for her to go to church and said she would look further when she returned.

I wondered why she didn’t find the ticket. Still, I was sure God had spoken to me.

That afternoon Ilah called me again. She decided to dig deeper in the same box and found a brown rectangular briefcase packed with songbooks. And, yes! The ticket was there. Ilah sent it overnight by bus, and I flew to St. Louis via Denver, leaving a couple of days later than planned.

When I arrived in Denver, I found there had been a snowstorm a couple of days before. Planes had been grounded for two nights. Passengers had gone to hotels or just slept at the airport. People looked tired and were standing in long lines trying to make the first possible connections. Thankfully, I got an immediate connection to St. Louis.

Later, my daughter commented, “You know why you lost your ticket, don’t you?”

“No, why?”

“You would have been stranded in that mess in Denver, perhaps sleeping in the airport!”

I guess so. But, more importantly, I would have missed a miracle!

Shirley Keyser lives in Springfield, Ore.