Dear Beloved

A Thursday night service at Church. I sat in the back pew. I didn’t want anyone noticing me or coming over to talk to me. I’ve never been here before. I wasn’t dressed anything fancy. I was just looking for a place to rest for a bit on my way home. People were singing and clapping. I didn’t feel like doing either. The Pastor was singing beautifully I thought. I tried my best to concentrate but it was hard. All I could think about was the lady I ran into on the way over here. She seemed a little strange, but she told me she was in a hurry to visit a special friend. She wore a red coat and her hair was like a white or silver color that came down her back. I’ve never seen anyone that looked like her. She dropped a gray bag she was holding while walking fast to catch the bus. When I saw it, I ran after her to give it back and almost missed her. The bus door had closed, but I was able to knock on the door and luckily the bus driver opened it. I called the lady over to hand her the bag that she had dropped. She thanked me kindly and I told her to slow down and hold on tight to her belongings. She told me there’s plenty more where it all came from.

I began walking back on my way to the Church. I just needed a place to sit down and rest. So there I was sitting in the back, watching others engage in the service. I already had my mind made up that I was going to leave early, but for whatever reason I couldn’t walk out. The Pastor began to talk about trusting God through the hard times. In my mind I was well aware all I was dealing with. I lost a lot due to hard times, but I tried my best to listen through it. Towards the end of the service, a single tear began to fall from my left eye. The Pastor gave an altar call and one of the ladies sitting in front of me asked if I needed prayer. I couldn’t speak and I definitely didn’t want go up in front of everybody. I told her I didn’t feel comfortable. So she gently asked if she could pray for me. I just shook my head yes. She reached her hand over the pew to touch my hands and as she prayed the tears really began fall. It wasn’t a long prayer, but when she was finished, she handed me a Kleenex and told me to hold my head up and that God was going to turn things around in my life very soon. I smiled and thanked her for the prayer.

As the service ended, I quickly began to get up and slip out the door past the foyer. As I was walking towards the main entrance, I noticed a Lost and Found box. There was a gray bag sitting in the box similar to the one like the lady I saw earlier rushing to the bus. I went over to the box to get a closer look. It was that exact bag that belonged to that lady I had encountered earlier. I had no idea how it ended up in here in this box. Picked it up and went back inside the sanctuary maybe hoping the lady I had encountered earlier was in there. I didn’t see her so I asked one of the male Ushers. I gave him a description of the woman and he looked at me and almost teared up and he told me that the woman I had described to him had been seen there before multiple times. I asked why that bag was in the lost and found. The Usher told me quietly that before that woman had died ten years ago, she would carry that gray bag with a little black book inside saying she was holding it for a young lady to give to who had fallen on hard times.

When he told me that, I dropped the bag and stepped back. He told me to not be afraid and to look inside the bag. He said that bag had been inside that box for ten years. No one has come to claim it. The Usher picked up the bag and handed it to me. I couldn’t touch it. So he looked inside and saw that there was a little black leather book. Inside it was a note that read:

This is not a dream. Your prayers have been heard. Do not be afraid. You are taken care of. Everything you lost, will be restored back to you. P.S. Thank you for returning the bag back to me today on the bus.

Behind the note I saw an envelope and inside was a cashiers check made out directly to me including my first and last name in the amount of 1.2 million dollars with dated for the present date. When I looked up the Usher had disappeared. I ran out of the church shaking holding the bag and walked down the street on my way home. I felt completely in shock. I didn’t know what to believe. I put the gray bag with the little black book, note, and check in the closet. I was able to sleep that night and when I woke up the next morning I opened the closet and the bag was still there with everything inside. I got dressed and headed back over to the church looking for that Usher and some more answers about what I had discovered and when I turned the corner, I couldn’t see the church at all. It was as if it was never there. All I could see was a field of green grass where the church was. I asked a woman walking by if she remembers a church here on this street and she said there hasn’t been one there for ten years. I told her I was there last night and she looked at me as if I was crazy. I tried convincing her and she tried her best to convince me that I might have been talking about another church.

She walked away and I was just left standing there dazed and confused. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and as I turned around, I saw her.....