A Word of Knowledge That Could Only Have Come from God

At a small group gathering in our home, a visiting minister paused during prayer and said he felt he had a word for someone in the room who had been carrying a secret grief about a brother. He described the situation with a specificity that made my blood run cold — the estrangement, the addiction, the guilt I had been carrying for not doing more. No one in that room knew about my brother. I had told no one. Not because it was shameful but simply because I had been processing it privately for two years. I raised my hand. He did not offer platitudes. He spoke over me words about release and about a door not yet closed. My brother entered a long-term residential program three weeks later — he called me the same week the minister had prayed. He is eighteen months into recovery. I do not know exactly how these things work. I know that man knew something he had no way of knowing.