Thanksgiving is upon us, and for most of us in the U.S., that means tons of food, family and prayers of gratitude. But what if the miracles we’ve prayed for this year, the things we were sure would happen… never did? How can we be grateful for the things that didn’t come our way?
Life coach and author Scott Marcus wrote an article in the Eureka, California, Times-Standard a few weeks ago that provides a good answer to this.
Recently, Scott encountered several unlikely coincidences. The strangest of all came after a client offered to put him up in the Wingate Hotel in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Soon after, the main character in the book Scott was reading traveled somewhere to clear her head. The place? The Wingate Hotel in Latrobe.
Freaky, Scott thought. A friend went one step further. “You’re getting a message!” she told him. “You must stay in that hotel! A miracle’s waiting; I swear it!”
Her enthusiasm was contagious. Scott expected something amazing to happen:
“Neither lined with gold nor floating on clouds, the hotel is actually pretty nondescript, appearing as so many chain roadhouses which dot our highways,” Scott wrote. “Nevertheless, the memory of her fervor has me titillated as I approach its entrance a few weeks later, my body coursing with adrenaline at the possibilities. Will I be their millionth customer and win copious amounts of cash? Might I save someone’s life and become a national hero? Will a choir of angels greet me in the lobby?”
But by the time Scott went to bed, nothing had happened. He woke up the next day disappointed.
“Upon checkout the next morning, lacking sleep waiting for a miracle that never materialized, I relay my story to the desk clerk. I joke it off to help alleviate the embarrassment I feel about believing divine intervention would make itself known for a middle-aged speaker in a chain hotel in the keystone state on a rainy September day.”
Then the clerk responded. “Did you ever think that—because you were here last night—a miracle happened for someone else, and it wouldn’t have occurred if you stayed elsewhere?”
That’s an incredible thought. One that made Scott smile—and one that we should consider whenever we don’t get what we’re expecting.
So this holiday, thank God not only for the miracles he’s done for you but for the miracles he’s done for others, too. You may have been a part of one, without ever even knowing about it.
