Stolen car found

One Saturday morning, as our family began its weekend activities, my wife came into the house asking where one of our cars was. Puzzled, our two young sons and I went to the carport by our house, and to our amazement the car was gone—stolen at night from just outside our front door. With our boys looking on, our desire was to make this a demonstration of God’s care for our family. My wife and I told them that by turning to God, we could expect this situation to be corrected, and we would see that God is taking care of us. We called a Christian Science practitioner, who immediately began praying with us.

When a police officer came to our house to file a report, he told us that the model of our car was prized by car thieves and that it might not be in usable condition even if it was recovered. When I called our insurance company, I heard again that our car was valued by thieves and was likely gone for good. Every time I heard this argument, I declared the truth that we were never subject to crime statistics and predictions of loss, but subject only to God’s law.

Mary Baker Eddy states in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Hold perpetually this thought,—that it is the spiritual idea, the Holy Ghost and Christ, which enables you to demonstrate, with scientific certainty, the rule of healing, based upon its divine Principle, Love, underlying, overlying, and encompassing all true being” (p. 496 ). I held to the idea that if the “scientific certainty” of good and harmony was real, then the probabilities of random evil and victimization were not.

We decided to continue our normal Saturday activities. Every time the thought came to me that the car was gone, I affirmed that God was in control, and that the all-knowing divine Mind would bring about a complete resolution. By noon I felt a great sense of peace about this event. Then my cellphone rang. It was the local police officer, who said they had found our car in a remote wooded area over 30 miles away, in good condition, and that a county deputy sheriff would meet us there to pick it up.

After driving on a winding gravel road surrounded by trees, we finally came upon the deputy sheriff waiting for us by our car. He asked if I wanted to see where he had originally found the car. It was a quarter of a mile back into the woods along an old, overgrown logging road. As we were walking, he remarked that we were very lucky to have recovered the car. I told him that in our family we pray about things like this, and he smiled at me. When we got there, I wondered how he could possibly have discovered the car in such an isolated spot.

He explained that earlier he had gotten a call about an unrelated situation in that area, and he felt he should go and investigate. When he arrived, he saw an old hat hanging on a bush, and something told him to walk back into the woods. As he was hiking, he noticed the narrow logging road and felt he should walk up it, which he did. Then he saw the trunk of our car barely visible in the trees. He radioed to find out if it was stolen, which he learned it was, so he moved the car from where he found it to the outer road. Other than a damaged ignition lock, the car was intact and ready to drive back home. As we walked out of the woods, I thanked the deputy sheriff for his work, and he said he was glad he “could be part of answered prayer.”

By 3:00 p.m. that same day, our car was back in our carport at home. Later I obtained a copy of the police report. It is notable that the officer’s initial report, filed earlier that day, concluded with the statement “case closed/leads exhausted.” Since the car was found, he had to go back and write an official supplemental report stating that our car was recovered.

I learned from this experience that with God the case is never closed. The car was in such an extremely remote location that, from the standpoint of human probabilities, we never would have found the car. From the standpoint of the reality of being, which Jesus taught and demonstrated, no ideas are outside of the all-knowing divine Mind. My family and I are grateful for dedicated Christian Science practitioners and the truths we study in Christian Science.

Daniel Block
 Bainbridge Island, Washington, US