Thank You, Saint Anthony, For Locating Lost Keys Grabbed And Hidden By A Baby And Much More...

Saint Anthony image obtained from website about St. Anthony, click here
for link, permission to share assumed, blog post by John Hoff

Now for the third time, (click here and here) this blogger acknowledges the miraculous intervention of Saint Anthony in finding a lost object. 

Some days ago I was visiting a relative in rural Minnesota and I set my keys down on the kitchen table. 

Yes, I know better than to set those keys down where the baby can grab them, because the baby loves to grab the keys and toddle off with them...

...but it had been quite some time since I'd visited and I just plain forgot about the tendency of the baby to make off with keys. So there was never any question of what had happened to the misplaced object ("I saw it right there on the table!" said my relative) but more a question of the infinite number of places a baby could hide a big, bulky ring of keys... including my "lucky skeleton key" from Afghanistan which unlocks Ali Baba's Afghan treasure! (If I had to guess, it consists either of lapis lazuli or plastic explosives) 

After looking EVERYWHERE, I began to look in the less obvious places, trying to THINK LIKE A BABY. 

The well-organized recycle bins out on the porch? Mommy puts stuff in there, so maybe stuff like keys should go in there? 

Nope.

The fridge? No sense checking the upper shelves, he can't REACH that far, but the vegetable crisper...?

Nope.

Maybe that little corner by the couch where he likes to go when he's upset because binge-watching Curious George has to come to an end at some reasonable point...?

Nope.

All this time, nobody suggested WAKING UP THE BABY and dangling a ring of keys and, like, ASKING HIM, "Keys? You understand keys? Where did the keys go?" No, while the adults looked everywhere, the baby slept peacefully. The adults were doing their job and the baby was doing his. 

I went out to my car thinking, "Well, sometimes I go to my car, try to find something in the front of the car, and I just lay the keys down upon the driver seat before sticking them in the ignition. So maybe..."

Maybe, said a little voice inside my head, You should ask St. Anthony to help you find the keys.

I do not like to call upon the Saint too soon or too often. He is busy helping locate lost objects all over the world and so it is best to exhaust my own human efforts before requesting divine intervention. But realizing the keys were not in the car and had almost certainly been purloined by the baby, inside my head I began to pray...

"Saint Anthony..."

"Found them!" that moment my relative appeared on the porch, holding my keys in her hands as I prayed the first two words.

"WHERE WERE THEY?" I asked.

"He put them inside my purse on the bed," was the answer.

Thank you, Saint Anthony. 

And thank you for that moment on the Iowa and Missouri border, which we will keep between us, but if anything that was even MORE miraculous. The Bible says before we have prayed, God has already answered. I am not aware of any verse that says "While we are in mid-prayer," but I think it's implied.