Praying for pantalones

If my son reads this, the jig is up. The week before school started he brought over four pairs of charcoal gray trousers, part of my grandson's school uniform, and asked me to hem them. I don't have a sewing machine and I could write a dozen columns in the time I could hand sew four pairs of pants (badly), so I hiked over to the local tailor shop and pawned my assignment off on them.

On the appointed pick-up day I showed up with my pink slip and the clerk took it into the back room, and after what seemed like way too much muted discussion in Italian, he reappeared and said they could not find the pantalones. He asked again what color they were (trying to say something hopeful), and I reaffirmed what I had said before and took a seat near the counter.

A second time the man with the cloth measuring tape draped around his neck emerged from behind the partition and brought bad news. Meanwhile, another customer walked in, was waited on, and left. It was then I decided to pray, suddenly emboldened by the memory of last week's answers to prayers - the time my granddaughter and I asked the Lord to show us where her fish food was, and the time when after much searching in the backyard on my hands and knees in the dark for my glasses (long story) I finally asked my husband to pray with me and was led straight to them.

The tailor came out a fourth time and had the school uniform pants with him, sheathed in thin plastic wrap and on a cheap hanger. I was happy and told him I had prayed for him. This made no apparent impression on the man but I was glad to have said it anyway. A testimony is a testimony. The Spirit may use it somehow after all.

"Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear" (Isaiah 65:24).