Impromptu ☀️🙏🏻

My dear sister Anne, first bus journey together since our schooldays way back in the sunny long ago. On her way to visit her husband in CUH, Anne normally drives and only took the bus ‘just for a change’. One of my many beautiful impromptu joy filled encounters. Had my designated bus shown up as planned, I would have missed out on so much beauty. God’s ways are always and ever will be, the best ways.

Zimbabwean lady. What a tale to tell, we will keep in touch. Prayerful as all asylum seekers seem to be. I have no doubt whatever that she and her fellow asylum seekers come to our shores bearing gifts more precious than anything we gift them. God owns everything. Last week as I asked four African ladies if they needed Bibles, it occurred to me how my fellow country folk would laugh in surprise if asked that same question. To our African friends totally normal welcome question.

Maureen (almost 80 years) shall remain in my heart forever. What a lady. Her turn of phrase, simplicity, prayerfulness, joy, acceptance, endurance, I could go on and on. Her widowed Mother ran a small shop and she: ‘Gave away more than she took in but there was enough to bury her’. Copious tablets keep mental illness at bay and because of them she suffers severe vertigo. She lives happily by God’s Grace taking the bus most days to the Friary in Killarney. ‘They know me there’.

She feels sorry for folk who shun prayer: ‘When the chips are down they won’t be able to take it’. Oh how I wish I could have recorded our whole conversation. Before we parted she apologised for ‘talking too much about herself’. If she only knew!!

Bus driver who not only happily received my prayer but took one also for his young son who loves reading the Bible. When I suggest he ask his boy pray Psalm 91 every day, Dad wrote it down in case he forgot. Holy Spirit wisdom for father and son! Another bus driver happily placed my powerful prayer in his work bag. 

African lady who’s beautiful baby was ‘diagnosed with Downes syndrome’. Or ‘blessed with Downes syndrome’, I replied. How she smiled. Little boy wrapped in swaddling clothes laid in a humble pram. Another unforgettable encounter!

While waiting on my super early morning bus that would never arrive (driver sadly took ill) Saint Mother Teresa’s quote danced into my heart: ‘Let us wait and see what God does with this’.

 As always, totally amazingly beyond beautiful every step of the way.

‘Lord, help me to make time today to serve you in those who are most in need of encouragement or assistance’. (St. Vincent de Paul)

Love this!! My powerful prayer at the base of St. Pio statue in Cork City Oratory. 

                              Gentle Friary. Peace and harmony far from the madding crowd.🙏🏻☀️