Tags
Asking for help, Broken woman, Christmas Season, Compassion, Fortaleza/Ceará, Generosity, Giving, Miracles, Spread goodwill
Natal de Luz 2014 – Christmas of Light 2014
Fortaleza – Ceará – Brazil
Photo Credit: Prefeitura de Fortaleza
The Christmas Season is here! The kid in me loves the Christmas lights and music. I love, too, the Christmas movies in which all things are possible. People look out for others. They are forgiving, generous, and compassionate. Miracles abound.
During our Brazil years, the miracle that stands out from all the other miracles occurred the year my then-husband returned to Guyana. Shortly thereafter, still reeling from being abandoned, I received an eviction notice from our landlord. Discovering we were three months in arrears with our rent sent me spinning.
I was a broken woman.
To communicate in Portuguese was still a struggle. Angélica,* a work colleague and friend, agreed to accompany me to talk with my landlord, a senior civil servant. I had not seen him since we had signed the rental contract four years earlier.
He looked at us with disdain. “So you’ve come with a lawyer.”
“She’s just a friend,” I managed in Portuguese. “To help me talk with Senhor.”
Angélica saved us from eviction. My landlord agreed to draw up a new rental contract in my name. I had a month to raise the overdue rent.
More sleepless nights followed. As a full-time import/export assistant with a small family-owned firm, I did not earn enough to pay all of our living expenses. I needed help; my pride stood in the way.
“Ask and it will be given to you,” Jesus said.
For days I pondered those words. Prayer was not enough. I had to ask for help.
Asking my boss for time-off, I went to see Paulo,* a foreign-exchange dealer with whom my husband had once worked. He offered clients a higher exchange rate than the bank.
I found Paulo alone at his desk in a tiny space in the stockroom above a store in downtown Fortaleza. Sitting down in one of the two chairs facing him, I told him of my predicament and asked for his help.
“I’d like to help you, but business is slow this time of year.”
Surrounded by a hodgepodge of cartons, we chatted about failed marriages and family life. On the arrival of a tall, robust Brazilian man in his early thirties, I got up to leave.
“Don’t go on my account,” the man said, sitting down in the other chair.
“Rosalie is from Guyana,” Paulo said.
He shook my hand. “I’m Pastor Francisco.”
Paulo told him about my predicament. What humiliation!
The pastor smiled at me. “The Lord sent me here today to help you.”
After Paulo cashed his US dollar check, Pastor Francisco* handed me the amount I needed. “Pay me back whenever you’re able.”
Later, I called Angélica to give her the good news.
“The Lord be praised!” she said.
Miracles happen. Pastor Francisco rescued me from a dire situation. It’s a bond of good will that time and distance can’t break.
Spread goodwill. Be the miracle in someone’s life today.
* Fictitious name
Three Worlds One Vision 
Reblogged this on Guyanese Online.
LikeLike
Thanks for sharing my blog post, Cyril. May the magic at Christmastime shower you with blessings.
LikeLike
“Be the miracle in someone’s life today.” Indeed. And, without your effort to help yourself, no encounter with the good pastor would have happened.
LikeLike
Very true, Dr. Stein. When we need help or want to achieve our goals, we have to put ourselves out there: to ask and risk being rejected. We never know when, where, or how we will meet the person who will help us to realize our dreams or solve an immediate problem.
LikeLike
The true spirit of what Christmas is all about… the miracle of new birth and the gift of goodwill.
LikeLike
Yes, indeed, Bruce!
LikeLike
Whether one likes to admit it or not, miracles or happenstance do happen to, and for, many. I’ve certainly had my share. The definition of “miracle” is something that happens that could not happen in the ordinary course, or natural order of things. If there can be any other explanation but a strictly supernatural intervention, then it’s not a miracle. Our problem then becomes the proper definition of what is supernatural. Claiming it is, is not enough but serves to fill in that “embarrassing” interlude between the purely natural and the possibly supernatural.
But then, does it really matter? What matters to me is the possibility of replication; of reliability. Miracles are fine, I suppose, if one likes to gamble. When I think of the times miracles are required, especially in war zones, I wonder about the capriciousness of the process, or concept. It is definitely unreliable, and extremely limited, in which case should we extol it, or condemn it?
If “miracles” are of the divine, or of some positive energetic force, what sort of force is that, that saves my own life (as has been the case on at least 3 occasions) while at the same time thousands of innocent children died of preventable diseases and famine? I could never rejoice in such arbitrary and grossly unfair events. Again, something that promises a lot more than it ever delivers, hm? Miracles: are we being helped, or are we being played? In either case, by whom, or by what and what is the agenda?
LikeLike
~ Definitions. Definitions. I have no idea how we can determine whether a “supernatural” intervention occurred in an extraordinary yet natural event.
~ Miracles do take place in war zones where, for example, all members of a family have died in a bomb blast except for one person.
~ Are “miracles” of a divine source or of some positive energetic force? For me, they are part of the mysterious forces, yet unknown to scientists, that govern our lives.
~ Are we being helped or played when “miracles” occur in our lives? Only the gods can answer your question.
LikeLike