Splicing the breaks in our life

As Alice tossed her wet laundry into her automatic dryer, her thoughts went back forty years. Before she owned an electric dryer, she always carried a heavy basket of wet clothes outside to the wash line in her yard. One day the pulley squeaked every time Alice pulled on the line, attracting the attention of a telephone repairman on a pole nearby, who sent her a neighborly wave.

Later as she made lunch for her toddler son, she could hear the clothes on the line snapping in the breeze when suddenly there was silence. The clothesline had broken and most of the clothes were laying in the garden. She went to fetch her laundry basket, and as soon as she stepped outside, there was the phone repairman. "Saw the whole thing happen, ma'am, so I came down the pole to give you a hand. Free service and a lifetime guarantee." With a few twists of his pliers, he mended the line.

Now, forty years later, she still remembers the stranger's kindness. It reminds her of another "free service and a lifetime guarantee" -- God's promise to all his children. God comes unbidden to help us splice the breaks and put the broken ends of life together. Sometimes He's hard to recognize in a hardhat and overalls.   (adapted from a 2005 issue of Guideposts Magazine)