A Dialogue With an Atheist (Pt 3)

Part 3

First, I must share the story of the lost keys so that you understand how humanly improbable this was. (Our folks at CGC might remember this. I shared it with them the next Sunday). As a Pastor of a downtown church in Toronto, I was given a set of keys along with a solemn warning. Those keys were expensive, and should I lose them, we might have to change locks on several doors, and then outfit all keyholders with a new set of keys, electronic fobs and all. One Friday night, after an evening of fellowship I realized once I arrived at home that I no longer had my church keys. I searched everywhere for them. I was hesitant to pray about this because it seemed too trivial an issue and besides, I don’t deserve an answer to prayer because my prayer life is so inadequate (Is it ever adequate?)

Nevertheless I pray. Sunday morning I arrive at church. Thankfully the music team has arrived first and the doors are open already. Our worship service begins at 9:30. At 10:40 or so, everyone spills out onto the sidewalk for a break. The sidewalk is full of people; tourists going by (we are in the heart of Chinatown) and worshippers mingling. I need to go from one building to another, so I manage to push through the crowd. In the thick of all that, I see a homeless looking old man shuffling through the mass, and as he passes me, I hear him mutter under his breath to no one in particular, “found some keys.” I didn’t pick up what he said until after I entered the building next door, and I pulled up short. Did he just say “found some keys?”

I rushed back outside, and he was still shuffling his way eastward on Dundas, past the thick of the crowd now. I ran to catch up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me. Did you say you found some keys?”

“Yes. Friday night.” Hope sprouted wings. “Where did you find them?”

“Over there”, he said pointing at the bus shelter in front of our church.

“Do you still have them? Can I see them?”

“Sure. But they are at my place.”

So he wasn’t homeless. “Where do you live?” I ask. “Just down this street”

“Would you please get them and bring them to me?” I couldn’t offer to go with him. Our next service was about to start. I was really hoping he would remember to come back.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, he came back and there were my keys.

A man not related to anyone in our church, shuffled by our church, walked through our sidewalk crowd, and would not know who to talk to among the 75-100 people on the sidewalk that day, not having the express purpose of returning the keys and not knowing that they were church keys. I, the loser of the keys just ‘happened’ to be on the sidewalk the exact moment he was walking by, and heard him muttering under his breath.

My friend of course wrote this off as a coincidence. The only smart aleck rejoinder I had in response was “Funny thing, the more I pray, the more coincidences I see.” To which of course, he rolls his eyes and cites a controlled study of an experiment that was done of a prayer team who prayed for a number of patients on a certain ward and did not pray for a different ward. Apparently it made no difference. Rates of improvement were the same. A nice but kinda silly ‘what aboutism’.

Part 4 coming soon…